When My Mind Drowns Out Peace

Anxiety has been a heavy itchy blanket I have been trying to put down over the last few weeks.  I feel like I have been rushing here and there – from helping to lead a team, to trying to be a loving, listening wife, to homeschooling and parenting the children, to taking the odd moments to write down the many ideas I have in my head and think about how to turn them into writing. 

I keep trying to shake this blanket off.  And trying to be still.  To spend time in worship in the mornings and quiet myself before Him.  But this noisy parrot of a brain keeps on at me, reminding me of this or that. 

I had enough.  Didn’t Jesus promise peace? In the storms He slept and He told the disciples: In this world you will have many troubles, but…I leave you my Peace.

Peace.  That is what I am struggling to feel right now.  How is it that I can lose a baby and feel His overshadowing peace through it all and now I can’t even feed Kaleb porridge without losing the peace I have gained in my quiet time?

So I spent a week, waiting for peace to come.  My mind all over the place, urging me to keep on, keep busy, keeping going, all the time knowing this needs to stop.  The tensions of ministry, motherhood and creativity surely don’t have to look like this?

So I asked God to show me the roots of this anxiety. 

I surprised myself when the first word I wrote down was ‘perfectionism’.  Now perhaps this won’t surprise those who know me, but it actually surprised me.  Not because I am not aware of a past of perfectionism, but because I was surprised it had become a present.  Yes, I like to do things well, but I am actually generally very flexible with things not being done and I generally don’t have a problem extending grace to others.

But then again – how good am I at accepting grace for myself?

Where had doing things in His strength and His freedom and His Spirit suddenly become about doing it in mine? These standards, this legalism that I was holding over myself – why had they just intruded my being?

And once again, I realize that I had made it about me, instead of about Him, and so it was no wonder that I couldn’t hold on to the ever-accelerating roundabout. 

And I realized how much of my life is supernatural – that I can’t do anything without Him and it is truly Him who holds it all together. 

And so I have decided to hand it all back over to Him again.  Because He can do it peacefully. And I can’t.

God, the one and only—

    I’ll wait as long as he says.

Everything I need comes from him,

    so why not?

He’s solid rock under my feet,

    breathing room for my soul,

An impregnable castle:

    I’m set for life.

God said this once and for all;

    how many times

Have I heard it repeated?

    “Strength comes

Straight from God.

Psalm 62:1 & 11. 

My peeling facemask

I struggle.  I struggle with the idea of struggling. 

There.  My mask is off.  More like a face mask – those peel-off ones I loved as a 14 year old, that pulled out those black-heads so satisfactorily.  Except, this time, I didn’t realize I was wearing the mask.

Part of my soul offered out, exposed.  And the waves of vulnerability break upon the shoreline of pride.  Or is it uncertainty?

Uncertainty of who this woman is.  This 28 year old, so used to going it alone, and no longer wanting to.  So used to fighting forward through the darkness of evil come against her, and fighting so confidently that when a punch comes in from the side I am suddenly thrown off-guard.  My roots are rocked and in this dry, dry soil they are desperately seeking for water.  Trusting that it has to be there.  Just.  Need. To. Go. Deeper…

 My mask collection actually consists of various happy faces: the super missionary; the calm, patient mother; the ever-loving, perseverant wife; the expert homeschool teacher; the compassionate pastor’s wife; the loyal friend; the wise older sister.

I love for you to admire my masks and marvel at my strength.

But any strength that is there is either a mask or not mine.  I would love to say that it is always His, but my own insecurities have not yet been melted away by His perfection.

And besides, in this desert I am finding it difficult to see His radiance beyond the glare of my own anxieties.

And these anxieties annoy me.  They rub against me.  The feel so old – so last decade, so coming of age.  Did I not throw them off?  Am I not now a woman: wonder-woman?

Where did they come from? Where did they creep up from these voids in my soul that are cracking my face mask and causing it to peel?

And Jesus. Beautiful, patient, arms-stretched-out Jesus.  You know.  And yet you still love.  You laugh joyfully and wholly and your laugh tells me I am your child and you accept me as I am.  That you find the masks quirky and silly and totally unnecessary and that you love the beauty of the face beneath – the exposed one, which can only go out in public with Him. 

And you remind me of the lies that the devil tries to tell me: search yourself. Keep looking at yourself – maybe you will get to the bottom of this uneasiness.

And instead, you tell me:

Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self.

(Matthew 16:24-26 The Message)

Eating Humble Pie

This is how the children of God are meant to be: called to greatness, called to be powerful in the kingdom of God, to awe the world with our ability to love; to shine for Him. 

This is how the children of God are meant to be: always recognizing and acknowledging our Maker – that all our strength and ability comes only because of Him.  We are simply the created works of the Creator, created in His hands.

_______________________________

Oh, Lord, keep me humble, make me humble – let it be about You, not about me. 

I think that has been one of my regular prayers ever since that Matt Redman song It’s all about you…..got stuck in my head as a teenager.

Humility.   It is one of those words I have struggled to understand what it actually means in practice.  How can we be proud of our achievements and celebrate them, yet also be humble? It always seemed fake to me if someone congratulated me on some achievement to say ‘well, really, it was all God/my teacher/a coincidence!’ just so it sounded humble.  And how can it be a good thing for a parent to say “I’m proud of you” but yet not be something we are trying to seek?

I always thought that it would be a prayer that God would maybe answer one day – just change my heart as I slept so I woke up all humble, or at least a little bit more humble each day. 

I now understand that in part, humility is based in thankfulness and a recognition that whatever we achieve, it is only because of Him.  We give Him recognition as the source of that.  Sometimes it can be more humble to recognize Him in my heart than as a false humility to others.  And sometimes I need to make sure that He is outwardly mentioned to be the reason why anything worthy of recognition is in my life.

The Bible tells us in James 4:10 to humble ourselves before the Lord and to clothe ourselves in humility in 1 Peter 5:5-7.  So that tells me that there is something I can do to make myself more humble – I don’t have to just wait for God to answer my prayer!

But what exactly can we do to humble ourselves? There is a great list here that I recommend you take some time to look at and pray through, but I think that overall it comes down to trust.  Because, when we can trust that it is our Daddy’s responsibility to open doors, to defend us in our relationships, to make things happen, to protect our hearts, to fill us up where we give out, we enter into the freedom of humility: letting go and letting God and truly recognizing: It’s all about Him.