Today I am Writing: On Changing the Response

Have you ever seen how your life brings you around time and time again to the same question, and every time, you respond to it out of some level of fear and some level of unsurety and some level of massive distrust that there is a One who knows your name and has proclaimed his truth over you?

And then there is the day that He says: No more.

This weekend I was faced with one of those moments. I got in my car, fully intending to let myself spin in all of my crazy (because at least then I can continue to believe that I am in control), when He said, loudly, in that don't even try to pretend you didn't hear Me way: "Thank me for what was GOOD."

And I said: Oh.

Right.

And then all week, I watch myself, come up against the questions. And every time I see myself stop myself and say: Choose this day how thou shalt respond.

And instead of the fear and the unsurety and the massive distrust, I simply look Him in the eye and say: Thank you.

Because when I stop and I thank Him, I see--as if lit by the backdrop of the sun and the moon and the stars in their place--that all that feels yucky is actually so beautifully beautifully Good.

This morning I read, "It is one thing to say 'fret not,' but a very different thing to have such a disposition that you find yourself able not to fret...This 'don't' [fret] must work in days of perplexity as well as in days of peace, or it never will work...Resting in the Lord does not depend on external circumstances at all, but on your relationship to God Himself."*

And I remember how He showed me the wall in my own heart, the one that held pain and anger and fear/unsurety/massive distrust so closely, as if it belonged to me and not to Us, and He said "You will never go where I want you to go, if you keep holding on to this."

And then there was the clincher: the "and, by the way, it stands between Us--will you really choose to continue to allow it?"

When my relationship with God Himself is interfered with by my choices, I come up for air and say: "I do really want to respond another way--will you help?"

And I read about transformation, how it is the losing of the self that Jesus calls us to, how "the salvation of the psyche begins with its own demise."** And I think of how we have forgotten the cost and even the reward when we evade stepping into that place where He has gone before, so that we might know ourselves, and know the One who Knew us before time even began.

"If you lose your life you will find it,"*** Jesus said. When to this I respond with, "But I want what I think should rightfully be mine," He looks me sadly in my eye, and holds out His hand, again and again, until I say: Oh.

Right.

Until I accept that there was a Day when He Proclaimed to every heavenly earthly place: No More.

Until I learn to change my response, and Live.

*My Utmost For His Highest, Oswald Chambers, July 4
**Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor, p. 88
***Luke 17:33