Overthinkeritis.....God Bless This Mess I've Made

I'm a dyed in the wool chronic overthinker.  A worrywort with a high IQ.  With (not so) brief flashes of control freak.  But I'm not OCD.  OCD.  OCD.  I can think myself into a frenzy that makes a perfect storm of crazymaking look like a gentle summer evening breeze.  I can literally worry myself sick with migraines, insomnia, exacerbation of my chronic illness, weight gain.  Please join me in saying, "That's no way to live"...and follow it up with a hearty "Amen!".

Someone pretty Awesome and Amazing whispered in my ear once, "Have faith".  Not only am I an overthinker, but I'm stubborn to boot.  I really am too smart for my own good and become my own worst enemy.  But, fine...faith.  So I set about studying, testing, proving and disproving faith.  I read books, I read the bible, I talked about it, I prayed about it.  When I was first exploring faith, I was also becoming newly re-acquainted with God after a long period of The Silent Treatment.  So I would pray these long, elaborate prayers telling God how things were going to go.  I'm sure if you listened in it would have sounded like trade negotiations between warring countries....a lose-lose scenario all the way around.

I'd do one of two things.  I'd get frustrated and/or desperate and surrender a big thing to Him, let Him work his miracle, then I'd take back over to manage (control) the details.  Or, I'd test faith by putting forth some sort of ultimatum about some small issue.  Talk about doing things the hard way.  But as time passed, as I learned more about faith and as God continued to patiently shower me in gentle grace, I became more and more comfortable trusting Him with both big and small things.

Light Bulb Moment!

The key was that I started to discover the distinct relationship between fear and faith.  Everytime I was struggling to trust God with something, I was able to admit feeling very fearful about the outcome of the same something.  Being able to let go of my fears is directly proportionate to me being able to let faith rush in.  As I come to understand the faith/fear ratio more clearly, it becomes so much easier to trust God. My prayers become less elaborate, knowing the final outcome and timeline become less important...and I worry so much less.

Being a single mom, money is always a concern, and this is where God has taught me my best lessons with faith.  Also self-employed, I'd become downright frantic about my next paycheck and where it might come from.  I'd worry about my lights staying on, I'd worry about feeding my kids, I'd worry about gas in my car, etc., etc., etc.  Again, I'd pray these elaborate, self-piting prayers...asking that so and so sign a contract because I really really needed the money for such and such.  One day, exhauste from worry, I just stopped and said, "God bless my bank account". And guess what?   I didn't win the lottery, but my lights stayed on, food was on my table, my car never ran out of gas.  I don't always have money, but I'm always taken care of, one way or another.  Nice side benefit, I've learned gratitude on a much deeper level.  But that's a whole 'nuther post.

God knows what we want, He knows what we need.  But more importantly He knows what our ultimate potential is and how that will work into His plan for us.  Take fear out of the equation (sometimes our first prayer!) and share with God your hopes, dreams and desires.  His intention for you will far outshine anything you can imagine.  A simple "God bless this mess I've made", a humble willingness to do the footwork, and patience is all it takes.

WordStudy: Fear

fear[feer] - noun

1.  a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid. Synonyms: foreboding, apprehension, consternation, dismay, dread, terror, fright, panic, horror, trepidation, qualm. Antonyms: courage, security, calm, intrepidity.

2.  a specific instance of or propensity for such a feeling: an abnormal fear of heights. Synonyms: phobia, aversion; bête noire, bogy, bogey, bugbear. Antonyms: liking, fondness, penchant, predilection.

3.  concern or anxiety; solicitude: a fear for someone's safety.

4.  reverential awe, especially toward God: the fear of God. Synonyms: awe, respect, reverence, veneration.

5.  something that causes feelings of dread or apprehension; something a person is afraid of: Cancer is a common fear.

 

Fear: Friend or Foe? 

 

 We all live with fear.  Some forms of fear are actually healthy and necessary...the fear that keeps you from walking too close to the edge, or that intuition that cautions you about a particular person. And then sometimes our "healthy" fear becomes broken or goes haywire.  Having been a participant in harmful relationships, I am all too familiar with unhealthy, unrealistic fear as an undercurrent to the entire relationship.


I've recently returned to church after a 20 year absence.  There's lots of reasons for this, which may be another post or may just emerge through a series of posts about other topics.  But, one of my biggest issues with going to church in the past was having to live in fear of God.  From early childhood I lived a life of (unrealistic) fear in a dysfunctional home...I desperately needed church to be my refuge, which it very much was.  It was the safest place I knew...but there was no room for fearing God in my heart.  I was being punished enough at home, I couldn't be punished by God, too.

Today I listened to my (new) pastor deliver a sermon on the fear of God, which I very much welcomed, as this was still one of the loose threads of my frayed heart.  He explained that the fear we are encouraged to have in regards to God is not the paranoid, frantic, apprehensive fear most of us assume.  But rather we need to adopt a reverential awe of God.  Like when we stand in front of the ocean....it's awesomeness is really beyond us..we stand in reverence of it's enormity and it's power.  

Same goes for God...regardless of your specific denomination, God is beyond our comprehension...we need to stand in reverential respect and awe of Him.  Don't fear what He will do if we "misbehave" but rather fear what He won't do if we don't allow Him to work in our lives.  God doesn't punish, He forgives...if out of frantic, paranoid, faithless fear we choose to leave Him out of our lives, we've created the consequence of not being able to benefit from His love and grace.  He's laid the table with a wonderful bounty, we can choose to eat or not, all He asks is that we come to the table in reverence and humility.


So having lived and participated in harmful relationships and then having to wrestle with the idea of fear throughout my healing process, I've had to define and determine what healthy fear is.  I've had to redraw the boundaries and cement them with my ever-blooming faith and God's grace.  For a time, I flew the flag of being "fearless".  Maybe it was a necessary phase of my healing as I made a clear choice to live a life of love instead, but "fearless" can also be dangerous.  Now I allow healthy fear to fulfill it's role, to allow it to caution me against real and present dangers and to respond without reacting (work in progress, by the way). 


But the real joy came today, in being able to resolve one more conflict with my need for an active fellowship life and my hesitations with "church-going".  "Fear" has taken on a deeper meaning for me today...and has a much needed and respected place in my life.