Addendum to Last Post
The rain is falling steady, slow, gray. It's a Friday and I listen to music about resurrection and I think about what I make life into. I race and fight, I pound my feet into the ground, running and running and always running. At my best I run towards things, toward Spirit and grace and passion and the things that make my soul & heart & body all work together in time-forgetting joy. At my worst I run away from the things that hurt me, always fleeing from demons and self and the moments that rub me raw. It is the running that makes me who I am, chaser of justice, seeker of deep hearts, lover of learning, exceeder of goals. It's the running and competing and pushing that make me work for great things. But it's the running -- the fleeing kind -- that gets me pinned into corners of comfort and escape from fear. Escape from mess and ugly and wrong. In the corners I judge each moment, stamping with approval or not-good-enough.
I've learned this week to whisper there is nothing wrong with this moment. In my anger or fear or grasp for control, in my tendency to skip over the minutes I don't like, there is nothing wrong with this moment. In my searching for the finish line, eyes scanning the horizon, mind checked out and rejecting the now, there is nothing to fear here. When I look it square in the face and accept the reality of the moment by 'forgiving it for being what it is,' I feel myself moving away from the corners. Stepping right out of the corners my controlling self backs me into. And in doing so, living the bad as well as the good. We all say we want more time and more life, but really what we want is to live everything we've got. Life fills out round when I live in the bad moments too, because my posture turns from struggle and judgment to integration and the idea that everything belongs.
The biggest lesson the Enneagram taught me is that at my core, my fallen heart says, "All is not well." (I'm a #1, if it wasn't yet clear) A posture of not-good-enough forces me to change life, to make it fit better, to use my hands and arms and shoulders to move and heave it into place. This is the place the anger comes from. And this is the place the gnawing discontentment comes from. This control place, which is really the fear place.
Fear is unbelief. Need for control is unbelief. And I've decided it's time to start naming it, repenting of it, and choosing to rewire my reactions. That means accepting reality and accepting imperfection and not backing into corners. It means living each moment, even the not-good-enough moments out of trust that God is already working in the redemption of it.
One of the greatest gifts of faith in Jesus is that there is now integration of the bad and the good. We don't have to hack up life into blessing and curse. We don't have to say suffering is meaningless, and we also don't have to find the bright side of it. It's just simply part of the story! There's no moment that doesn't belong.
And there's NO moment to fear.
"Fear is like this piano wire cutting round the wrists, life shackled, cutting deep, and the hands spasm, fists of control. Fear keeps a life small. The music dies and the joy drains. I've lived the strangle."
Ann Voskamp
I've learned this week to whisper there is nothing wrong with this moment. In my anger or fear or grasp for control, in my tendency to skip over the minutes I don't like, there is nothing wrong with this moment. In my searching for the finish line, eyes scanning the horizon, mind checked out and rejecting the now, there is nothing to fear here. When I look it square in the face and accept the reality of the moment by 'forgiving it for being what it is,' I feel myself moving away from the corners. Stepping right out of the corners my controlling self backs me into. And in doing so, living the bad as well as the good. We all say we want more time and more life, but really what we want is to live everything we've got. Life fills out round when I live in the bad moments too, because my posture turns from struggle and judgment to integration and the idea that everything belongs.
The biggest lesson the Enneagram taught me is that at my core, my fallen heart says, "All is not well." (I'm a #1, if it wasn't yet clear) A posture of not-good-enough forces me to change life, to make it fit better, to use my hands and arms and shoulders to move and heave it into place. This is the place the anger comes from. And this is the place the gnawing discontentment comes from. This control place, which is really the fear place.
"Perhaps the opposite of faith is not doubt. Perhaps the opposite of faith is fear. To lack faith perhaps isn't as much the intellectual disbelief in the existence of God as fear and distrust that there is a good God."
Ann Voskamp
Fear is unbelief. Need for control is unbelief. And I've decided it's time to start naming it, repenting of it, and choosing to rewire my reactions. That means accepting reality and accepting imperfection and not backing into corners. It means living each moment, even the not-good-enough moments out of trust that God is already working in the redemption of it.
"The transfiguration of a suffering world has already begun. Suffering nurtures grace, and pain and joy are arteries of the same heart -- and mourning and dancing are but movements in His unfinished symphony of beauty."
Ann Voskamp
One of the greatest gifts of faith in Jesus is that there is now integration of the bad and the good. We don't have to hack up life into blessing and curse. We don't have to say suffering is meaningless, and we also don't have to find the bright side of it. It's just simply part of the story! There's no moment that doesn't belong.
And there's NO moment to fear.
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