I have to admit. I've been in a pretty bad funk lately. I can't put my finger on the exact reason why. I have my health. My family is very healthy. I have a good job. Great friends. I can pay my bills. I have clean water whenever I wish for it. Plenty of food. A non-leaking, warm roof over my head. I have a God who loves me. So this funk I am in bothers me because I cannot for the life of me figure out what's going on.
I had an inclination at one point today. It could've been fleeting, like many of my thoughts and "wonderful ideas", but it stuck. Maybe this is the issue.
I sometimes get in these valleys--these low, low points. Not quite depression, I hope, but maybe it is and I live in denial. Who knows. Regardless, these lows are very painful. They fill me with a blackness that covers everything in a filmy coating. Laughter isn't as belly-full. Talking with friends isn't as genuine. Interacting with my family seems shallow. It's odd. So what came to me was this idea of "past". I do admit that I find myself trying to relive past moments...the shoulda, coulda, woulda times when one decision I made over another may now, in the light of hindsight, have been the wrong one. Most people call it "regret". I hate that word. It's my least favorite R word. It's a terrible word. Synonymous with JAIL or PRISON. Because when I find myself in these blackened moods, it's oftentimes because of regret.
I'm not saying that I wish my life was different because then that would short-change God and His infinite wisdom. I guess what bothers me the most about my life are the habits I've formed, tendencies I've created, and philosophies I've chosen to live by that are now running counter to where I believe God is taking me. All because of past decisions that I made prior to wanting to take my faith life much more seriously.
I'm a perfectionist at heart. I find I expect a lot out of myself. Most of this is internal because to look at me, I could care less what I look like on the outside. I'm quite content with sweats, t-shirt, sneakers, and maybe the occasional combed hair look. But inside I do demand perfection from myself and get highly agitated when I feel like I've done something second-rate. Raising kids--especially teenagers--and being a perfectionist do not make good bed-fellows. Parenting has stretched the boundaries of how serious I want to take myself. And although I have come quite a long way, I still have so, so far to go, and I believe my low times stem from the regrets I have about my parenting decisions, my childhood, and my habit-forming tendencies when faced with adversity.
I decided today that REGRET is a Past Tense God. It is a God that truly competes for my attention on a daily basis. A single quick argument with my 15 year old son can conjure up this God in an instant. A balance of $22 in my checkbook conjures that God up, too. Talking with friends and reliving our childhood--things I missed coming from a broken home--calls that old God of Regret up, as well. So many instances, like sacrificing on an alter or lighting incense and praying fervently, call that God up. Why does that God respond so quickly when my true God, the God of this universe, take so long so often to answer prayers or to make Himself known? Why is the God of Regret so accessible when it lives only in the past? I can get very very frustrated and angry when I focus too much on this. I can shout out to God and say, "Why is being a Christian such hard work?!?" Convenience is not a Christian word. God doesn't work on conveniences. That bothers me.
But the thing about God is this: He doesn't worry about my past. He doesn't worry that I have little satisfaction when I reflect on my childhood. He doesn't concern Himself with all the failures and faults I've chalked up to immaturity, rash decision-making, or selfishness that comes with being human. God cares about the now and the tomorrow. He wants us where we are---right here and now, this very second---and He wants to work with us and through us to create a future that is unique to each of us. God cares about the fact that suffer through bouts of regret. He probably is pretty jealous that I devote long periods of my life bowing to Regret instead of Him. But He is the Light. Despite my being blinded by the darkness of regret right now, God knows my today. He knows my tomorrow. He is my Light and He will lead me home.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs6blSoUmJ4
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