Before the sermon...
It's a good day when I wake up with a crusty layer of mental yuck sending confusion and disorientation my way; then I take a shower, get dressed, come down to my Morning Pages and daily reading and remember - the enemy is always going to be at work trying to knock down protections around my head and heart. My surrender to my Father in Heaven must be every single day, sometimes many times a day.
I have been experiencing a strange mood and attitude the last month or so. Burnout, frustration, exhaustion - mostly mental exhaustion I think, lack of focus and enthusiasm. I had arrived at a place where I started to believe that there was nothing I could accomplish in my future; not in the area of improving our home space, my weight management, my creative endeavors... But one day last week, I realized I had been trying to combat all this on my own. Even though I might have thought that I had surrendered it daily to God, had I really? What did that look like? A comment my friend made - that she was “really tired of working so hard to be mentally healthy” - hit me right in the center of my being. That was really very true for me too, and that hadn’t been the case for a long time. My surrender had been pretty affective in the past years, what had changed?
I’m not sure I actually have an answer to that question other than maybe a bit of complacency. I got comfortable and allowed myself to stop doing some of the good things for myself that always helped me stay healthy mentally, emotionally and spirituallly. Maybe more accutately, I started to view those things as the source of my help, rather than God and His strength in my weakness. Yep, that sounds about right. So when I recognized that, I was able to actually pray for help in surrendering and that made all the difference in the world. But you know, that only lasts a day and then I have to do it all over again. It is God’s manna - I’ve often compared our daily peace to God’s manna. If He provided peace in advance, we would, in our humanity and self-reliant tendencies, take all we could get and not seek Him for more until we had run out and needed it. God wants our attention every day, not just on days when we realize we need Him. The truth is, we do need Him every day, we just don’t always recognize it until we are figuratively running on fumes. All those things I was experiencing - burnout, frustration, confusion, exhaustion - those are all just a few of the symptoms of forgetting to really surrender on a daily basis.
All this has led me to consider a little experiment. There are several areas in which I think I would benefit a great deal by letting go of the reigns that I sometimes mistakenly think I hold (control is an illusion folks - you already knew this, right?). My weight is one of them. My time management is another. I suspect there are other areas which will come into view as I move through this experiment. I’ll write here more about the experiment in progress in the coming weeks. Join me? Maybe we’ll learn something new together!
I have been experiencing a strange mood and attitude the last month or so. Burnout, frustration, exhaustion - mostly mental exhaustion I think, lack of focus and enthusiasm. I had arrived at a place where I started to believe that there was nothing I could accomplish in my future; not in the area of improving our home space, my weight management, my creative endeavors... But one day last week, I realized I had been trying to combat all this on my own. Even though I might have thought that I had surrendered it daily to God, had I really? What did that look like? A comment my friend made - that she was “really tired of working so hard to be mentally healthy” - hit me right in the center of my being. That was really very true for me too, and that hadn’t been the case for a long time. My surrender had been pretty affective in the past years, what had changed?
I’m not sure I actually have an answer to that question other than maybe a bit of complacency. I got comfortable and allowed myself to stop doing some of the good things for myself that always helped me stay healthy mentally, emotionally and spirituallly. Maybe more accutately, I started to view those things as the source of my help, rather than God and His strength in my weakness. Yep, that sounds about right. So when I recognized that, I was able to actually pray for help in surrendering and that made all the difference in the world. But you know, that only lasts a day and then I have to do it all over again. It is God’s manna - I’ve often compared our daily peace to God’s manna. If He provided peace in advance, we would, in our humanity and self-reliant tendencies, take all we could get and not seek Him for more until we had run out and needed it. God wants our attention every day, not just on days when we realize we need Him. The truth is, we do need Him every day, we just don’t always recognize it until we are figuratively running on fumes. All those things I was experiencing - burnout, frustration, confusion, exhaustion - those are all just a few of the symptoms of forgetting to really surrender on a daily basis.
All this has led me to consider a little experiment. There are several areas in which I think I would benefit a great deal by letting go of the reigns that I sometimes mistakenly think I hold (control is an illusion folks - you already knew this, right?). My weight is one of them. My time management is another. I suspect there are other areas which will come into view as I move through this experiment. I’ll write here more about the experiment in progress in the coming weeks. Join me? Maybe we’ll learn something new together!
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