so i get freaked out, ok?
I also pass out when i get blood taken. It's a completely involuntary response...I know the needle doesn't hurt...I don't even really mind that feeling of the blood leaving my arm. A couple weeks ago when I had my blood screened at work I tried my hardest not to pass out, but I was gone even before she had put the needle in my arm. It's the weirdest thing. The weirdest feeling to feel all your blood leave your extremities and to still be somewhat conscious that all your organs are shutting down. It's painful, but you're scarcely aware of it happening, yet still somehow completely aware. (maybe you've never fainted and don't have this problem--i guess you'll just have to take my word for it)
I've got another involuntary response, and I can't seem to gain any control over it. I get freaked out in relationships. The thought of things being serious or moving toward seriousness causes me to shut down completely. It's the weirdest thing. The weirdest feeling to have all your insecurities and past failures flood in at the same time and overwhelm you. It's fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of mistake. Fear of not being enough. It's shame. Shame for past failures. Shame for present shortcomings. Shame of the current insecurities which I should've moved past long ago. It's Lies. Lies that consistently plague and haunt and run through the corridors of my mind infiltrating every room with their stench.
Luckily that's not what the gospel is all about. Unfortunately (or more accurately, fortunately) I am still learning how
the gospel really applies to life, to me. What it means to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, to take captive every thought. Understanding that conceptually isn't too hard, but the practice of it is quite different altogether. I live in my mind, in a world of hypotheticals, in a world of solving problems even if they don't exist, in a world of unconscious thinking. It's one of my biggest struggles to regulate my brain and how it thinks--and I've just started to realize recently how big of a difference what you think makes.
In a couple weeks I'm attending a seminar called Discovery, with the intent and purpose of looking at the ways I show up in life, the thoughts and emotions that are behind those actions, and then at the core what beliefs guide those thoughts and actions (think of three concentric circles with what you believe at the center). I've realized for a long time that I often don't show up in life the way that I would want to, and too often diagnosed that specifically as the problem...i.e. if I could just quit doing
this then
that would fall into place, not willing to admit that the problem is really deeper. The past several years for me has been a journey into the heart (and severely hard). I am starting to see some of the deeper thought/emotion issues behind the actions, but still have yet to connect those thoughts to the things I believe that just simply aren't true. What's hard is those beliefs have been shaped through 27 years of people and experience and reinforcement that they're pretty strongly rooted there. Like do I believe that a strong and healthy marriage is possible? I know it should be, but I don't really believe it. I haven't seen it intimately enough in my own life (other than glimpses into some of my friends) to really believe it's something I could achieve. The example of my parents outweighs everything else I've ever seen, mostly because I know it's their blood that courses through my veins. How many things like that do I believe deep down in my core that affect my thoughts and emotions and actions? That cause me to freak out all the time? That trigger the involuntary responses that I wish I could just simply mentally control and move past?
I'm in a study at work about the life of transformation through the gospel. It's been really good for me after the first two sessions, and one of the phrases that I've resonated with is 'learning to preach the gospel to ourselves.' I have to continually be preaching to myself that what God says about me, what the Bible says about me, is true. That grace steps in where I fail and where I succeed. That we do not have a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind. That I am forgiven. That I am a child of the God of the Universe. That love covers a multitude of sins. That I cannot EVER be good enough, and to think that I can is perhaps the biggest LIE that I can ever believe. That His LOVE is STRONG.
"why should i worry?
why do i freak out?
God knows what i need..."
-Jon Foreman "Your Love is Strong"
"The devil is preaching The song of the redeemed That I am cursed and gone astray I cannot gain salvation...
...Hallelujah, he's right"
-Shanes "Embracing Accusation"
