Struggling with Demons

Sitting in comfy clothes under warm blankets with a sleeping dog snuggled under a blanket next to me I realize that I have lost all thoughts of what I sat down to write. My mind meanders and stares at a wall inside my head waiting for something to zap it into attention. I think of the dancers I watched this evening in competition, the grace, fluidity of movement, peace. I think of those retired, unemployed, on vacation - quietly living their lives in a more peaceful state than my harried one. We all have worries, we all have misery sometimes but I now wonder why I allow things to get to me. My mother assured me that I have a really cool life and that I should really live it.

My thoughts drift to a dream I had last night. My friend, Shelly, a charismatic Christian, always tells me that if I want God's direction and His visions that I need to ask Him for them and be open to them. Sometimes I think she's just nuts but I know she speaks the truth. I have been struggling with one thing for about 18 months - the inability to walk away from someone that has me so entangled in it that I feel unable to leave the situation behind for good. Before I fell asleep I asked that God give me peace about leaving it behind. My dream brought me to a place that showed all my friends and family and I would leave them to go see this person without telling anyone where I was going. This continued for awhile which paralleled my life situation directly. I woke up at 3am in distress about this dream but fell back to sleep only to dream of being in a forest with the knowledge that I was to meet this person again but had misplaced my phone. I walked toward a house that I knew would have a phone but made a conscious decision to continue to walk by and go in a different direction only to leave that person with no way to contact me or me this person. I walked on and when I awoke this morning, I knew I had left the situation behind. Healing, a weight lifted, peace.

Now that I have allowed myself some space from that situation, I have been focusing on my office space situation. Up to this point, I have not been worried about renting this office space and to all who know me, they could visibly see how excited I was about it. Now that I have been approved and am moving forward with the lease, the little worry demon that seems to come around just when I'm feeling assured has crept back in to nag me. There are so many things going on and I have so many visions of what the next few months will hold but I am letting the little things pull me down and am causing myself anxiety over it. I have never needed to worry about having enough business. I've learned from so many other entrepreneur's mistakes. I know what I am doing. This seems to be a mind over matter issue that I will break. When my personal life is great, my work life isn't. When my work life is great, my personal life isn't. This is where I break that cycle. My personal life is fantastic and so is my work life. I will prevail.

Loneliness is something I continued to think I was fighting in my personal life until this past weekend. The loneliness demon is something that has had its talons in me for years. I was reassured by a very helpful and intelligent woman (my mother) this weekend who helped me see that I was not lonely and couldn't possibly be lonely. It was pure make-believe. Few people can say they have lots of people in their lives who care about them. I have more friends than I can count, more family (blood or not) than I realize and if I felt lonely, I have 150 people in my BlackBerry I could call to have an uplifting conversation with. What could possibly allow me to think that I could ever be lonely?

We all have doubts. We all worry about things. When we look back on the things we worried about, we realize how silly we were for doing so. Trust that God will take care of it for you and ask Him to do so. He wants us to lean on Him, that's why life isn't a merry-go-round. Let go of worry and let Him work in you. "Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be opened unto you." Matthew 7:7 - I'm going to start asking and stop worrying. Easier said than done but a conscious effort will be made in all aspects of my life. He has given so much to me, I just need to take it.

Spiritual Journey: Watching, Reading, and Reflecting

Lying in bed reading Maya Angelou's All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes while 'listening' to her recount a breakfast she had, a black woman, with a German family, German neighbors and a Jew and hearing of her innocent question that started a horrible ending to the meal made me start thinking. I remembered The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and the horrendous ending to that and Schindler's List that my father didn't allow us to listen to due to the F-bomb being used too much. I live with a German man who can be the most thoughtful person I know and I realize that so many people have so many prejudice(s?) against those who are not like them. I thank my stars that all the women before me fought for rights so that I might own a business and not be married at almost 29 without people looking at me funny.

This evening, I also watched the movie Doubt about the Catholic priest accused by a nun of being innappropriate with a black 12-year-old. So many dynamics in that movie - gay, black/white, Catholic, nuns, priests, fathers who beat their children, a mother's love, unfounded accusations, trust, disbelief, etc. The fact that the movie is dedicated to the sweet young nun makes you realize that the story is most likely true. The prejudice in that movie was haunting, even between nun and priest. Heartwrenching stuff.

Before reading Ms. Angelou's book this evening, I flipped through In the Grip of Grace by Max Lucado to see if I wanted to read a little deeper and found that I was too tired to get really deep opting for what I thought would be a lighter read. Lucado's words caught my eye before I shut it and stuck with me through my other reading. "What separates us from God is sin." and Paul says: "There is no one who always does what is right, not even one. There is no one who understands. There is no one who looks to God for help. All have turned away. Together, everyone has become useless. There is no one who does anything good; there is not even one." (Romans 3:10-11)

Every single one of us has blown it. We've all done everything wrong. At least we have a faithful God who allows us to come to Him, even when everyone else points their fingers, and He will forgive us. Let me repeat "every single one of us has blown it." I have, you have, we all have. In Doubt, the priest looked at the nun and said "have you never committed a mortal sin?" She starts to get teary and says she has. He said "then we are the same." She disagrees greatly. But it's true! Ms. Angelou recounts the German telling a story about a man who puts a bird in warm poo to keep it alive in the dead of winter, when the bird wakes up from thawing out he starts making noise and a wolf comes by and eats it. The morals ring true: 1. He who puts you in the sh*t is not necessarily your enemy. 2. He who takes you out is not necessarily your friend. 3. Once you find yourself in the sh*t, learn to keep your big mouth shut.

In my beliefs, every sin is equal. A white lie is equal to that of cheating on your spouse. The cheating might hurt another person much more but both must be apologized for and asked of God for forgiveness. Being that all of us have committed sins and caused harm to ourselves and others, we have hurt God more times than we want to know. His pain is not something we physically feel all the time but the burden gets very heavy until we ask for forgiveness. Why is that we feel the need to be the man on the hill judging others for sinning? My pastor just spoke about removing the plank from our own eye before trying to point out the sawdust in anothers.

I have had a really rough few years learning by making mistakes and growing. because of it. Growing is painful. I was told recently that God doesn't allow us to go through things that we won't learn from. He doesn't allow us to make mistakes for no reason. I feel that my mistakes have led me to a place of deep reflection and have given me a quiet sort of peace about where my life will lead from her on out. This doesn't mean that I will not continue daily to make mistakes and hurt Him but at least I know that God is in control, not me. I am only asked to obey Him and to praise Him. He needs my full attention. He is my father, my savior and my comforter. What more could I want?