As anyone who has read my recent blogs knows, I have been in a real funk and struggling with a lot of issues especially on the social and professional front. I have been barraged recently with life….it doesn’t seem to stop….or even slow down. I feel like I am on a roller coaster, just plummeting up and down, and going in circles, just following the track, not able to do anything but charge ahead, because I can’t jump the moving roller coaster. Of course I chose to get on the roller coaster, and had seen from a distance what was ahead, and thought…..”I can take it”.
Of course now I am looking at yet a larger roller coaster….much larger…. imagine a roller coaster of just sheer up and downs one after another and loops in between…..and I am like….”I would have to be insane to try that”……but then a number was written, and a lot of zero’s were put next to it if I jump on this roller coaster…..my weakness….so the insanity started to set in and I started to think “Okay, but only for a year, and then I’ll think about it…..I mean it’s only a year….right?” It would mean displacing my life, I would have to move and my Warp Factor 7 life would crank up to Warp Factor 10 ½ I would also be doing something that I like least, and put myself in a position of great power and responsibility, along with it come a lot of temptations of the world. But when the zero’s got involved it peaked my interest….all of a sudden the weak man inside me felt validated, I was becoming greater. But in the same moment deep down, every real part of me knew, that like a crack addict, saying just one more hit, I was only fooling myself with one year.
I have been praying and struggling with these things for the last couple of weeks, and have felt like I was in a complete funk….that and because of my recent default promotion, my schedule is non-stop, I forget where the hell I am some days….I’ll go to window and open the blinds and be like, WTH…. What is the Space Needle doing in NY…..then a couple minutes later it hit’s me….Oh, wait, I must be in Seattle…No joke….I actually thought that one day.
Also I haven’t been sleeping so well, I get really bad night terrors and lately they are paralytic….my mind wakes to the half dream state….and I have the MOST dreaded feeling, like something bad is going to happen, or that someone is in my house…..but I can’t move, all I can do is look, with utter dread that harm will come to m; but I never quite wake up, so I fall back to sleep and then repeat….it doesn’t make for some restful nights; and doesn’t make me really want to close my eyes period, with as much sleep as I get anyways…NOT GOOD.
Then there are some other things, which I won’t discuss, but it just has been getting deeper and deeper….literally there have been times I felt like I was in a nervous breakdown…..and I may not be out of the woods yet…but I can see the sunlight at the end of them.
I prayed and prayed and prayed, and read my bible, I read some other books that have inspired me in the past…and prayed some more….and seemed to get nothing….until one day I was reading what to me is the corny classic scripture….having grown up LDS….read a hundred times…but the meaning has never rang true to me, I was reading James 2:20-25
20You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless[d]? 21Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23And the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,"[e] and he was called God's friend. 24You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.
25In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? 26As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
God was like *SMACK*, with a 2x4 moment, I realized for all the praying I was doing, asking God to help me, thanking him for the comfort, God said “Look in front of you, and locomote your metatarsals!”. Of course me being the incredibly intelligent person I am, I thought about this passing thought, then let it pass as the phone went off….the adversary has a way with distractions…but God knows when we are weak and knows when we just need to be led by the hand…about an hour or so later a friend texted me some comfort…and then was like we should get together. My first thought (nothing against you friend) was “Oh, no not another thing to schedule”, so I sent a generic text with my less busy days, that we should arrange it sometime…..and once again does not take long to be easily distracted by my life….I have a lot of the world yelling in my ears, invading my email, texting, IM’ing…it is loud with the many things of the world …..Then later that day I started to think about it…..another *SMACK* to the proverbial head, God has been sitting there tapping his foot at the door, waiting for me to get up and answer, slipping pieces of my blessing under the door, and yelling, get up you idiot! As I sat in a chair in the room saying help me, help me, ignoring the doorbell. It was that smack that the meaning of the verse hit me: Faith without Works, I was so busy praying and….being busy, that I wasn’t doing anything to make time or taking advantage of God trying to all but thrust a blessing at me, but he wasn’t going to ram it down my throat…..Just then I noticed long time friend online, whom we always talk about getting together for lunch….but never actually culminate until months later…..then I thought to myself, God has put people prominently in front of me….saying “Okay, Eric, I’m not doing everything, you gotta do two bits worth at least!”. I realized God had answered me by placing people around me. Now it was my turn to actually make an effort…the scary part…put faith in the Lord….and take action. So I talked to my old friend and set up a time within the week…..it was amazing….I also decided that people God put in front of me I was going to have real conversations. I was going to abandon my island I have created, I have worked so hard at isolating myself, that I was tying God’s hands, saying help me, while I ran. Then the same day I was meeting the one friend….God text, another friend wanted to do coffee that day, because they had some random time to kill. During both conversations, I opened a little…it felt good, I could talk to them and they listened and I listened to their advice and what they had to say….God worked his glorious wonder….I experienced trust…I can trust people, it was amazing.
Then yesterday, I was just randomly talking to my long time friend, and he recommended a book to me, called Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul, by John Eldredge. Now people recommend books to me all the time, and I put them on the list, and generally optional reading I have little time for. But this was a trusted friend….and I felt like it was a God moment, he gave me a nudge…I looked on Amazon, where they had the first couple of pages. It intrigued me, but I had to catch a flight, and so stopped by B&N and picked it up. It wasn’t very long, so as I sat on the plane, I read it….I cried in parts (luckily the seats around me were empty….) because it described my pain so vividly, while confronting me head on. It came out and said what I needed to hear, that being wounded is not bad…not even uncommon….and the hardest part was to remove the object that caused the wound and let it heal….but how so many cling to the wound letting it fester and embitter us….how we search for validation, and accomplishment in success and direct our minds to worldly measures of success….It hurt…but oh so good…I’m allowed to be human…I’m allowed to make mistakes, and be hurt…but it was time to allow healing, and mostly to let God, and those God surrounds me with to help…and to need help is okay. It also put the grandios roller coaster with all it’s zeros in perspective….I wasn’t taking it for any other reason than my own foolish man centered pride of what I have been taught is self worth, and validation…trying to compensate for the wounds in my heart…creating one more diversion from ever having anyone see the real me, letting the wound fester that much longer….when God has awesome things for me to accomplish here…
I love how awesome God is, and how much he loves me, even when I’m being stupid, prideful Eric, he gently nudges me, holds my hand, and keeps the 2x4 handy….because some of us need a smack or two at time. And I love how I have such patient friends, who watch, but are willing to deal with imperfections, and my shortcomings. There is one more major thing that is a large wound in my heart…but God is still holding my hand, while I muster the ability to take action…but that is why God is so awesome…no matter what he’s there….loving us through it all.
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