Setting my eyes on God

Well, first I know it has been a while. My Christian walk has always been a roller costar ride, but that only mimics my life lol. I fell into a valley and become more and more isolated and cut off from everything and everyone I knew until I was drowning in hopelessness and pain and bitterness. When I finely got numb and dead enough in my emotions, God sent someone to kick start me by accusing me of something I had to seriously think about concerning demonic spirits. Although it shook me up a little at first, I worked through all the religious legalism that was presented to me and was able to verify that the “helping hand” was wrong, but there was plenty of bits of truth sprinkled thought her speech that I needed to not only hear but accept as well.

I am not surrounded by demonic spirits that prevent any guys from ever wanting to get close to me because I like to participate in Middle Ages reenactment, (lol), BUT I have let life choke my spirit until it was no more than a ghost. Not wrong in and of itself, the reenactments were providing me with an escape from life and God does not want us to escape life, He wants us to live daily for His kingdom not spend all our time trying to escape. The reenactment hobby, like my daydreaming and reading habits are all attempts to escape a seemingly intolerable life.

Actually, everything in my life revolves around this issue. I have allowed my work, my job, to become my identity and God started shaking that up this year by pulling me from the work I loved and knew and threw me into a situation that is constantly changing (OCD people do not like constant but unexpected changes) where my sense of identify at work seems to be lost in translation.

Next He removed me from all connection to support from other people. Being an extremely social oriented person, I was crawling deeper and deeper into my hole trying harder and harder to escape a life that has become intolerably lonely. My church family distanced, my friends gone on with their lives without me, and my heart rejected and thrown back in my face… again. But, for the first time in my life, I actually see what my head knew but didn’t really understand.

I realized it while talking to a wise lady last night that what I am going through is death throes. My psuche (heart or soul) is drowning because it is the part of me that wants to remain in control of my life. It is like I am in that last desperate gasp for air in a drowning victim – trying desperately to claw, climb, struggle, and basically preserve that part of myself that I feel is mine. You know, the part that we are to give up to become sentient metaphors for Christ (inside joke lol). But in all seriousness, God requires that we seek Him only. The Bible is clear that a man cannot have two masters, and in this case, we cannot have God and ourselves controlling our destinies. If we give our lives to God, then we have to choose to let go of our dreams and hopes and even fears to walk through life being led by the Holy Spirit of God instead of our own soul. That is a desperate battle in the best of times, because being human we do not want to give up our sense of self, but I am coming to understand that until I can “suffocate” my own sense of identity I cannot become a reflection of Christ.

In my Christian walk I had come to the limit of what I could do in myself and I was walking round and round the mountain constantly looking at the promised land offered all around me, but unable to enter in. Not because I screwed up, or was a bad person, or for really anything that I have done or not done, but because I had not reached the point that God needed me to reach to be able to go where God wants me to go. And for the record, I am not there now either, but for the first time in a little over a year, I have a sense of peace and I feel like I know where I am going. Not a specific destination, but a state of being.

God had to remove everything from me to get me to a place where I could listen, because my heart was singing as loud as it could about how it hurt. Kinda like a small child sticking their fingers in their ears screaming lalalalala.

I get it. It’s not about me. And amazingly enough, that thought is no longer crippling. I can’t tell you why exactly. I know that I had to reach a point where I could actually accept that there were things in my life that I needed to change that I did not want to change. I know that I had to get far enough away from the pain of a broken heart with a numb sort of emptiness to be able to hear the distant sounds of God’s patient calling. (He wasn’t distant, I had just stuck my fingers in my ears). Am I miraculously changed and happy, I seriously doubt it lol, however, I am not consumed with the need to fulfill my perceived needs for the first time in a long time, if ever. I understand, it’s not about me. It is not even about what I can do for God’s Kingdom or how I can contribute. It is about God.

Now, I need to face each day with the constant reminder that I am at work to be who and what God wants me to be and do. It is immaterial if I make a difference in any child’s life (boy that freaks me out to admit) if it is not the purpose that God intends. My job is not about what I can do; my job is to be whatever tool God chooses to use in whatever circumstance God chooses to use to reflect God. It is my job to reflect God in everything I do. Such simple words, easy to understand and yet powerful words when filled with true revelation.

Am I a saint? Far far from it. Have I arrived? I just got on the right train. I remember in London once when I was headed for a flight out of Gatwick, I ran for a train leaving the station to just barely make it onboard only to find out I had taken the wrong train and it was an express to a different part of the country. Although I always padded my leaving times for the airport I was in a total panic when I realized that I would be miles and miles from where I needed to be once the train finely stopped. However, the conductor was quick to advise me of how to do a little train hopping and an estimated time frame to assure me that I would still be able to make my flight by rerouting. Throughout my Christian walk I have taken many different trains to many different distnations, and most of the time in the right direction, but I never seem to get where God wanted me to be. Now, I feel like I have been on that express that was speeding through my life without hope because I didn’t know how to reroute myself and it just seemed like I would miss out, but once I went to find the conductor and admitted that I made some mistakes, God simply reassured me that I would be fine and he would simply reroute my trip to get me on the right life train without fanfare or difficulty. It only required acknowledgement of the error and a true desire to find the right train. Rather than being a hopeless journey to nowhere alone in the darkness, it is now only a simple detour that allowed me to see a little more of the countryside.

Not sure the metaphor is complete LOL, but it resonates with me and that is all it needed to do. So, out of the emptiness and unbroken darkness, I find that I am drowning, but instead of that last desperate gasp and fight to survive, I am at peace with whatever is coming. Will I always be that way, hardly seems likely, but I am here now. Floating in a sea of peace that passes understanding. I just accept it and accept that my life is turning a corner into unknown waters, but waters owned by the Creator of the Universe and whatever happens is ok. Weather love ever finds me, which is still my desire, or not, I will be ok because I am not going to focus on my life. I am going to set my eyes on God and simply try and reflect His image all day, every day to the best of my ability and whatever comes will come.