Ruminations

It's become a cliche almost, this personification of innocence.  I shrug and admit,  " I know I take too much for granted.  I recognize I'm walking around with a loaf of bread under each arm while complaining about what I don't have, what I didn't get, when another, less deserving schmuck did!" A shrug then may be the measure of a thousand words and multiple excuses.

So.  I find myself surrounded by truths and "dodges." A choice point, surely.  It appears that I've locked myself behind bars. whose key I tossed eons ago.  Maybe, though. I'm enamored with the drama.  That's what happens when a life swims in ponds of mirages.   "Get ahold of yourself, Daughter," Mama (my grandmother) would counsel.  "Life's not a bowl of cherries, but it's not stale cornbread, either.  Whether you like it or not, both can feed you, Girl!"

How do I find the "grip" and then keep it? Really, I didn't have a clue.  Even worse, I'd enclosed myself in an invisible shield that most people found too daunting to challenge. Who needs it?  Actually, I  tended to my own needs so solicitously it left me little time to deal with outsiders' issues. Jeez! 

Yet, nothing is impossible if I seek engagement from God? Right?  I'd read. "Not one promise is impossible with God! (Luke 1:37, TPT). Nothing.  Well, then, did I believe in the ultimate and supernatural sovereignty of the Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent God I professed to serve? Or what? What part of the question was I missing?  Finally, it dawned on me that I lived too often in my head. 

Of course, cerebral living is safest for a coward.  There, I've said it.  In fact, I just acknowledged where I've wasted at least a few decades of my life on frivolous concerns.  Concerns that matter only to me! I  fertilized trivialities into well-tended sunflowers that took only the energy involved in opening a packet and planting seeds.  But, was it that simple? Or had I veered from one extreme to the other---judging myself harshly by not distinguishing gradations of minor to major, then pampering poor, misunderstood me as a result?  

Maybe.  But, wait! Could it possibly be that the answer lay outside the confines of my mind? Hmm.

"Yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin,
Each victory will help you some other to win,
Fight manfully onward, dark passions subdue,
Look ever to Jesus, He'll carry you through 

Generating the faulty assumption that I should know everything, or have all the answers neatly codified, becomes a subtle, energy-sapping phenomenon.  Yet, it can happen so sneakily that before I'd recognized it, I'm the mouse reaching onto the thingamajig that holds the cheese.  And bam, the snap has latched onto a vital part! Now I know why the "old folk" punctuated their lives with "Lord, have mercy!" or "Help me, Jesus!"

I've also outgrown the "self-help craze that swept me over and almost drowned me with falsities.  Years of pain, anguish, and self-doubt later, I found strength and instruction in the Word: "I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me" and significantly, "With God nothing is impossible." There I'd been, on the dance floor thinking I was leading and directing only to discover I'd been dancing with an imaginary partner! Oh, my!

Might that be why the boys in my junior high class rarely asked me to dance?  I hadn't believed it when Sam, my "older brother" by 18 months, once told me. "They say you always try to lead," he explained. Since I rejected that notion, I never asked him again.  And never again did a boy ask me to dance.  Hmm. Was it by default that the Word became my reflexive response, my "Go-to" for thorny issues, reassuring problem solving, and decision-making? A resounding "Yes!" Not overnight. mind you, but with the Holy Spirit leading, I learned to! 

"Where He leads me I will follow, Where He leads me I will follow,  Where He leads me I will follow---I'll go with Him, with Him all the way."

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