Closer to #2

Sometimes, in a moment of meditation, you see your life, or some facet of it, or some truth about it, in a way or at an angle that you hadn’t- or hadn’t accepted- before.

There’s a part of me that I don’t really like.  It isn’t a part that can rule me- not since I accepted Christ- but it has trained me to play along all too often.  It drains my energy- weakens my ministry-fills me with garbage I don’t need and don’t have room for.

Like Paul and his thorn of the flesh, I’ve stood at many Waterloos with it.  I’ve fought, and lost.  I’ve given it up to Christ- except for the yo-yo string with which I always yank it back.  And in the sermons I heard yesterday, a suggestion was made- that everyone has a part of themselves that they keep from God, a chunk where we hide the things we hope He will agree not to see.  And when Jesus asks us for sacrifice, that is the sacrifice He wants.

Today, the Lord, Scrappy, and I took a walk.  And as usual, He guides me into thinking, in my despair and pleading, the thing He’s been saying all along.

Today, that was the thought that there are two facets of my life, and I cannot change either one.  My pain, my despair, comes from the dynamics between these two inescapable truths of my life.

#1- There is a battle between “it” and me, and I have and will always, always lose that battle.
#2-There is a battle between “it” and Christ- and that battle He has already won.

Those are two very powerful extremes, and every human being has them already locked up inside them, or the potential to it.  And the bad consequences of that dynamic is because I continue to live my life focusing on the first instead of the second.  If I live closer to #1, I have the consequences of a) the frustration of falling time after time, b) the inability to see or show the benefits of being at the other end, and c) the harm it does to my ability to help others with this concept.  As I move toward number two, I find a)the frustration fades because I have my mind clear of the things that lead to my fall, b) the ability to see that when I do stumble, I have Someone who is faithful to pick me back up, and c) the joy that comes with being a positive to others.

Everytime it comes up, I pray for strength to win the battle I can’t win. And waste my time.  What I need, from now on, is to get up and pray to be led closer to #2.