I must confess

I've tried to write two other blog posts this week, but I keep coming back to the one true thing on my mind this week. I thought about saving this post for my weigh in tomorrow, but decided to go ahead and say it now.

I have a confession.

I cannot function without rules.
This is a fact.
I need rules.
I need a plan.
I'm either all or nothing.

I've been this way for 34 years, so why now is God telling me that this might be a problem. A big problem.

I actually think I've known in the back of my mind this needed to be addressed. But I wasn't really thinking it was for godly reasons. But lately it seems every time I'm about to make another list, or plan my day (or week), or make diet rules or anything along those lines I feel a nudge that asks "Do you trust Me"? To which I reply "Of course". To which I then feel the need to drop the pencil or quit overthinking.

And then I read this (An excerpt from "One thousand gifts: A dare to live fully right where you are" by Ann Voskamp) :

How can I trust when a troubled, joy-shriveled heart has pumped fear through the stiff veins of all my years?

I exhale. I'm still all knotted.

If I believe, then I must let go and trust. Why do I stress? Belief in God has to be more than mental assent, more than a cliched exercise in cognition. Even the demons believe (James 2:19). What is saving belief if it isn't the radical dare to wholly trust? I read it in one of the thick commentaries, that two hundred twenty times that word pisteuo is used in the New Testament, most often translated as belief. But it changes everything when I read that pisteuo ultimately means to put one's faith in; to trust. Belief is a verb, something that you do.

Then the truth is that authentic, saving belief must be also? the very real, everyday action of trusting.

Then a true saving faith is a faith that gives thanks, a faith that sees God, a faith that deeply trusts? How would eucharisteo help me trust?

I read the verse several times in the Amplified Bible on an afternoon while young hands work scales up and down the piano keys, "Jesus replied, 'This is the work (service) that God asks of you: that you believe in the One Whom He has sent [that you cleave to, trust, rely on, and have faith in His Messenger]'" (John 6:29 AMP) That's my daily work, the work God asks of me? To trust. The work I shirk. To trust in the Son, to trust in the wisdom of this moment, to trust in now. ANd trust is that: work. The work of trusting love. Intentional and focused. Sometimes, too often, I don't want to muster the energy. Stress and anxiety seem easier. Easier to let a mind run wild with the worry than to must the energy. Stress and anxiety seem easier. Easier to let a mind run wild with the worry than to exercise discipline, to reign her in, slip the blinders on and train her to walk steady in certain assurance, not spooked by specters looming ahead. Are stress and worry evidences of a soul too lazy, too undisciplined, to keep gaze fixed on God? To stay in love? I don't like to ask these questions, sweep out these corners where eyes glare from shadows. But this I must ask and I do, out loud, to the C-scale being played with certainty: Isn't joy worth the effort of trust?

And there was SO much more!

So then, I had to honestly ask myself- Do I trust Him? I want to say yes. I feel like at least some of things I try to plan are things He's asked of me. And of course there are some things that require a little planning. But somehow for me a little planning turns into overplanning.

Every time.
Every.
Time.

Do I trust Him to show me from minute to minute what He wants me to do? Do I trust Him enough to not make myself sick with worry about things I can't control- for example, a teenage son? Do I trust Him to hold me, tight, in His hands even when things don't go as I had planned?

Instead of spending time on planning. I need to spend more time praying. Praying and looking for opportunities to serve the Lord that might have otherwise passed me by. Stop worrying about specifics, like when is the right time, and just wait on His timing.

While every part of me wants to keep planning (and planning, and planning some more). I am beginning to understand why I shouldn't allow rules to rule my life. If rules are ruling, God's not. Even when I think I'm planning things "for Him", I need to stop. Living by rules and constant planning completely steals the joy out of God's plan for me. It also very much inhibits Him from using me like I want Him to.

"When I am afraid, I will trust in You" Psalms 56:3