Friday, November 15, 2013

Fighting My Fearful Fist

I think as human beings we want closure. We like to know what's going on, we enjoy answered and questions without open-ended answers. We want problems to be solved and broken things to be fixed. We desire wholeness and sense.

There's a kid in my writing class who loves to write stories with frustratingly open endings that leave the reader wondering, questioning, unsure and desperately wishing to be provided with more details and a neat gift-wrapped box of closure. His writing is full of unanswered questions and vague information, yet when he reads other writing he always wants more closure, more cohesion, more information, more detail. His writing lends itself to chaos and ambiguity, yet he still seems to want finality and answers.

And I find that to be a fascinating indication of the human nature. We want answers, and we want closure, and most of all we want control. We want to write the story and keep the story and determine who reads it, how they read it, what they think, and maintain the power to change the ending and main characters as we please. We want to be the puppetmasters, yet we're insanely terrified of being our own puppetmaster because then what if we mess it up and the strings get all tangled and there's no one to fix the mess we've created.

So we write plays without answers yet we keep a tight grip on our desire for control and conclusion.

And I am the greatest culprit of this.

If I could pick one underlying theme for the narrative of my life I think it would be my constant pursuit of freedom. I so long to just be free, to spread wings and fly without a care, soaring on the breath of the Wind. To just be free in the knowledge that I am deeply loved. But here's the conflict to this desperate desire. I also like to be in control. I tether myself with my lack of surrender because I'm so afraid of falling I don't trust the wings I've been given. So I can't live with the joyous abandon I'm meant to embrace.

That is my other narrative, a need to trust and surrender. Which is actually tied up in the desire for freedom because I can only have freedom when I trust and my fear of surrender keeps me from freedom. It's a mess, really.

My whole life I've been learning about these things, but especially intensely in the past six months or so. I have learned so much about trusting God, and so much about His love for me and the freedom that it brings. And I've learned how much I like to be in control of my life, and how greatly that inhibits my ability to surrender to God. Because when I surrender to God I must relinquish control of my life and hand my story to Him, ask Him to write it for me, because I trust that His ending is far better than any ending I could ever imagine for myself.

And honestly I've begun to learn to do this. I truly believe God has worked in my heart to bring to a place of greater trust than I've ever experienced before. I've had an immense amount of doubt and uncertainty about what my future would look like, where God wanted me, what He wanted me doing, why things weren't working out, why He didn't seem to want me where I thought He wanted me, it was intense. And I spent months being in this place of saying, "God, I'll do whatever you want me to do, go wherever you want me to go, be whoever you want me to be...just tell me what you want, just tell me please, please, please." I was so willing to do anything, as long as I knew what it was.

And God did not tell me. Finally, after months of praying and learning and hearing God brought me to a place of being able to say, "God I'll do whatever you want me to do, go wherever you want me to go, be whoever you want me to be." And end it with that. No "but just tell me," or "I just need to know," and so on. I had to actually be willing to not know and trust that He would work and provide as necessary and my job was just to take it one day at a time, one step at a time, and moment by moment sacrifice and surrender.

God brought me to a place that the song Oceans describes perfectly, "Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders...take me deeper than my feet could ever wander, that my faith could be made stronger."

And when I was finally legitimately completely okay with a completely unknown and fully surrendered future, I saw God work in incredible ways. And at pretty much the last minute, I watched Him provide and work in ways I'd barely even imagined but never thought I'd actually see happen.

Ephesians talks about God as one who can do immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine. Habakkuk talks about God doing things we wouldn't believe even if we were told. I saw God do more than I could ask or imagine, I saw God do works I never expected.

But the minute I finally surrendered and then saw God work and was handed an answer and a "plan" and some sort of hazy picture of my future...I decided the best thing to do would be take control again. I mean God's insanely powerful and all, but obviously I'm the one who should be in control, right?

And so my fingers started to curl in, my hands no longer open and holding out my surrendered life.

So here's what I'm realizing is the problem with just having open hands - I can still close them. What I am beginning to understand (and will absolutely have to be re-taught again, and again, and again) is that I cannot simply hold my hands out, fingers spread wide, palms open, and let my life rest there held up to Christ. I have to let go.

I have to turn my hands over, unclench my fingers, and let my life fall.

Because when I hold my hands up, my hands are still the ones fighting gravity. So I haven't surrendered because I'm still the one doing the work, I'm still in the way, I'm still keeping control. And I'm allowing for a backup, for a Plan B, because if I don't like where God is taking my life or I don't think He's moving quickly enough, I can close my fingers and grasp my life in my own two hands again.

But letting go, actually releasing my life and seeing it fall - that is actually surrendering. At that point I've actually given up and let go. I have to trust that something will happen. God may stick out His own hand and catch my life in His, or He may let it fall to the floor. Either way, I have to trust that whatever He does with my life - flying or falling - it is good, because God is good, and all He does is good and for His glory.

It's not about where my life goes, it's about who my life belongs to. If I'm actually letting to and truly surrendering, then I have to be okay with my life going any direction with the knowledge that whatever God does with it is the absolutely best way my life could ever have possibly gone.

So now I'm faced yet again with uncertainty, doubt, insecurity, fear, and the overwhelming haze of the unknown. And to be honest part of me just wants to clench my fists, because I haven't yet fully let go. I keep holding on to something so I can maintain some control. But deeper than that desire is my longing to truly surrender.

I want to let go. Turn my fists over, uncurl my fingers.

I want to be free of the cage of my controlling fist and fall free.

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