Piles

Brace yourself. This is a long drawn-out gushing from the heart of Bek.

Right now I feel like all I'm doing with my life is watching Doctor Who instead of doing anything with my life, and it's gnawing at me. I feel like there are so many more things that I should be doing but am avoiding or am completely incapable of doing. Part of this feeling is that my life is a pathetic little pile of things I have done, and right next to this pathetic little pile is a huge, ever-growing pile of things that I "should" do. You know, things like learn to cook for crying out loud and read the Word more and read more books and be nicer and stop being selfish and why don't you write more and stop thinking about Doctor Who all. the. time. and discover your life plan and calling and every step in the journey and then go and do it for Pete's sake and have you exercised in the past forty weeks and why haven't you finished all those projects yet and....it just goes on and on.

The temptation and tendency is to focus either entirely on the pathetic-ness of my little pile and then curl into the fetal position with my eyes closed OR to become overwhelmed by the sheer greatness of all the things I've yet to accomplish or master...and it still results in the fetal position with eyes closed scene.

However, Jesus speaks to girls curled up in the fetal position. It's fairly easy to listen to Him, because I don't really want to listen to the voices in my head pointing out allllll my failures and inadequacies. Jesus tells me that I don't have to do anything to be successful, that He loves me for me and not what I have or haven't done. Then He pulls me up out of the fetal position and opens my eyes and shows me how He sees my pathetic little pile - not so pathetic from His point of view! - and then shows me the things He has really called me to be and do - totes doable with His strength - and then I realize that the piles should not be the focus of my life but rather HE is the focus.

That's the nice ending, but sometimes it feels like even when Jesus says, "Look at Me" the piles are still screaming for my attention and my reaction is to point helplessly at the piles and tell Jesus to look at them. I struggle with focusing on "let Jesus change me" thing because I just want to do things and I want to be able to do them in my own strength and then point at my accomplishments and pat myself on the back. But that cycle ends with me back in the fetal position, which accomplishes nothing, which keeps me in the fetal position...vicious, eh?

So today I'm forcing myself out of the fetal position and rolling/slumping into the kneeling position, begging God to forgive my pride and my immature "I do it!" toddler-like beliefs. I'm asking for freedom from the piles and I'm admitting I can do nothing without His strength. And then I'm going to ask Him to please please remind me of this fact, no matter how painful or embarrassing the reminder is.

Today I'm broken and hopefully He gets some glory from my piles.