Save Me from Myself
I decided one thing when I came back to blogging, I told myself I wouldn't write about what I felt I should write about, I'd write about what I wanted to write (meaning it could be my Dad's birthday and I could talk about chipmunks eating mangoes). This I decided and this I'm going to do. I've primed everything up to talk about Thailand or the Winter Olympics, but I don't feel at all like talking about either of them right now.
I haven't been thinking about them. I've been thinking about everything but them. Isn't that strange? I find myself talking about everything but what I want to be writing about sometimes often, I think, because I don't know how to talk about it. I've been living in a whirly-wind of emotions lately, knowing what I should be feeling, but ending up angry at myself because I can't feel it.
I haven't been able to feel content.
Rachel rang today and sitting in my big old chair on the front verandah I gushed my little heart out. I've felt so disconnected lately, like I'm just sitting here waiting for life to start. As I sit here I've been thinking about all that I want to be. I've been thinking about wanting to travel, wanting to write, wanting to be able to get up at the same time every day, but most of all I've been thinking about wanting to be married.
I thought I wasn't like those girls that set their minds on being a wife and mum and then consume themselves with it. After my post in December I wrote about not being that. I talked about how that's so unbalanced and how walking with God is after all one day at a time. When it comes to the crunch I don't think I am that, but unawares of how it really happens, I became it.
I began reading blogs by older women I highly respected. I don't think there is anything wrong with this, but somehow these people post more than others and so I've been reading a lot about this stuff, about them being mums and wives and because my reading has been so limited latley, this is what is filling up my head.
I love what they write but at the same time I've been thinking so much about the future that I've started worrying about it. Fretting. Seriously, fretting. What if I never get married? What if some guy never comes along? What if I'm not pretty enough? What if the guy I'm destined to be with meets me wearing my drabbiest clothes, smelling like I haven't taken a shower in two days, and my face is all red and oily? What if I analyze him too much and write him off as no good instead of really praying about it? What if...what if...what if...
I've started freaking myself out. A mutilated line from the Evanescence song "Bring Me To Life" keeps going over and over in my head.
"Wake me up inside. Wake me up inside. Save me from myself. Bid my blood to run before I come undone. Save me from the nothing I've become."
Those of you who know the song are going to laugh at me because that's not the real lyrics and that's not at all what the song is about, but that's what keeps singing over and over in my mind. I keep thinking, "Wake me up...wake me up...save me from myself."
What kind of a fruitcake am I? I don't want to become like those girls. I don't want to become like that. I don't want to turn obessive, I don't want to turn so narrow minded. I dont' want to think of every new guy I meet as a possible husband instead of a possible friend. Save me. Quick.
The other night I pulled out a little book I bought ages ago called "A Maiden in Waiting: cultivating contentment in the season of singleness" and flicking through it, a few words by one girl really struck home with me. She wrote:
"I know that like me, many of you have a deep heart's desire to be a wife and mother. Each of us needs to take this desire and lay it on the altar of sacrifice...I am particularly fond of the following definition of contentment: realizing God has provided everything I need for my present happiness."
I ran my finger across the page...I wanted to crush the little book in my hands, hide my face in the pillow and scream my heart out. I had not done this.
Last year I came to a point where I had to give up my desire to get better to God. I remember I had to admit that maybe I'd be sick for life and asked myself if I could live with that. Eventually I thought I had and in that thinking I somehow thought I'd never have to do it again, that sacrificing all my dreams and desires once took care of it for life, but it seems it doesn't.
I've begun getting better and I've begun pulling my dreams back out of the mud, wipping them off and shining them back to their former beauty. It seems I've spent so much time on the motherhood one lately that it's come to this point where it's glow has consumed and blinded me.
I couldn't figure out how I could be getting physicaly better and yet be so unhappy. I was praying so hard to God, but I wasn't finding any peace. Why wasn't He listening? Why wasn't He talking to me? Where was the joy He promised?
I went to Isaiah chapter 59. I wasn't looking for an answer, I was almost doing it out of obligation, only expecting the words to blur in my head like everything else was.
Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save--it began--nor his ear to dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.
This made me angry. Ragingly angry. God has felt so far away lately and misinterpreting my discontent, I thought it was because He's been hiding. It was His fault, I sub-consciously accused, He's let me be so sick the last two weeks and filled me with all this brain fog and pain so that I haven't been able to read his word and understand Him, or sit down to pray and be able to train my thoughts into sayable words.
It definitely wasn't my fault. Oh, no. What have I been doing? Planning for the future. Thinking about the things He's said He has planned for me. Trying to get better. Trying not to get too angry or irritated with anyone. No, it couldn't be me, I decided in my heart. I definitely hadn't murdered anyone.
Isaiah ignored my outburt and kept speaking--no one calls for justice; no one pleads his case with intergrity. They rely on empty arguments and speak lies...the way of peace they do not know; there is no justice in their paths. They have turned them into crooked roads; no one who walks in them will know peace.
I felt instantly admonished, like Paul says God's word often does. I had no peace. I definitely had no peace, but I had never imagined it was because I had been pleading my case without integrity, relying on my empty arguments that were filled with more rage at His seemingly injustice than a contrite spirit and a broken heart. I have been behaving like a spoilt little child, angry I can't have my lolly, when first I need to delight myself in the Lord, sacrificing all my desires to His time and plan.
I'm note sure yet exactly what this all entails, I really don't. I said earlier that I don't believe reading blogs by older women that I respect is a sin, but obviously filling my mind with all they write right now has set me thinking too much about the future. Could it really be this one thing has consumed me so much it's separated me from God? Can I really be that shallow, can I really be that blind?
I hate how this thought blows my pride, how it reminds me just how humanly frail I am. I thought knowing of a sin could keep you from it, but it seems it makes no difference. I'm as human as I was before.
Wake me up inside. Wake me up inside. Save me from myself.
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