Fighting with Reality- Being Human

Just what does it mean to be human??? Fully,completely human?? Jesus lived the most complete human life of anyone, and He was partly divine. He never lost touch with His humanity though. He took time to be alone when His batteries were low. He enjoyed socializing with His friends as well as people He came across in the course of life. I get caught up in some idea of what i am supposed to be as His follower and seeking to imitate Him and reflect Him but I lose sight of the acceptance aspects which He gives to us as we are simply human.

I beat myself up internally all the time for my perceived lack of mental toughness and invincible courage and boldness to take on any and all challenges undaunted by any fear or worry. I fail to note the small instances where in my own way I did take steps of courage and boldness, maybe not even close to my inflated magical superhero vision of them, but they still happened. I don't expect or ask anyone else to carry out this perfectionistic vision i have in my head so why do i hang onto it for myself??

God made us, He knows each one of us far better than we could ever imagine. He knows my whole mixture of faith/fear/struggle/desire and all else inside me. I pray He helps me to deal with my fear as genuinely as i can,acknowledging my faults and weaknesses with it. I have lil moments of deliverance and peace and many moments of dread and anguish. I pray he will help me to accept myself more fully and to accept that pain,suffering and certain other unwanted experiences just are part of life. God Himself has had them so how can i in all honesty expect to get a pass when He doesn't??? The acceptance of no pain no gain really is a help when its implemented.

Fighting with Reality- More

I think psychosis is a way to find rest from reality for many i really do. My mind just gets so overloaded so much and it just keeps going and going like the energizer bunny. I keep butting heads within my mind with varying thoughts. Why am i not where I think i should be and why do I have a place where i think i should be instead of just accepting what is???

Jesus told His disciples as well as the crowds following Him to come to Him as a little child. He did not elaborate much on this, so we have to analyze and interpret what He meant. Endless analysis and interpreting is what makes my mind spin and spin. Where is the Spirit to grab hold of me and just make me know- THIS IS IT!!!! So much history of so many interpretations.

What is Gods expectation?? David, the man who *is a man after Gods own heart* committed adultery and murder. Was his life perfectly holy and obedient after he repented of these sins?? What is Gods expectation of repentance for us??? Surely he knows that most all of us have sins which we repeat over and over again, maybe they are small and not so bad in the large picture, but they are sins nonetheless. Repentance therefore like confession is ongoing throughout life right???

This is my dilemma where I fight reality right now. I seek to surrender myself to God as best I can, seek to pursue Him and His ways, His Word, and at the sametime have all these other desires which go against the ones He lays out. Is this true for all of us as just what happens in life?? Is there a time and place where holy obedience and faith just rules in the heart and mind and lets the believer live life in peaceful rest??? What is the reality supposed to be???

Hopefully I am saying some similar themes in different ways in these posts. The point is struggling with personal experience and Gods Word and His promises and what to do when they are not in alignment. Are you having a similar struggle or have you found a nirvana??

Fighting with Reality

I love reading blogs. Also seeing titles of blogs on the blogroll of people i follow, I find so many fantastic writings there. My blog buddy Misti Pearl has John Eldredge on her blogroll. He had a post talking about how we struggle with accepting reality, hence the title of this post. Tiffany Stuart has a post talking about being all in with God,whatever He asks. These 2 themes fit right in with where i am at currently, quite a coincidence eh??

These 2 themes, accepting reality and being all in, really hit me as deep to my core as anything. I talk so much about my battle with fear, and specifically my fear of death, which on the flip side is also fear of life. it is often like I have created my own torture device within my mind where I seek to turn to God and seek His answer to my fear. But, as i do so, the fear begins to act like whatever torture method you can imagine and the more I seek to give Him my fear and trust Him with it, the more the fear becomes unbearable. It is a very strange thing where in order to keep the fear at bay i cannot seek to commit it to God or it will activate. Is that a lil insane???

My friend Miriam in a recent comment spoke of how we can turn God into just one more fear and that was very eye-opening. God is love, perfect love. His perfect love is supposed to cast out fear. My twisted logic i developed awhile ago is that, since I still felt fear i somehow missed on His perfect love, maybe I am not deserving of it and so it is withheld. Of course, none of us are deserving, that is why it is grace and a gift, and displays the majesty of God as being love. I am trying to piece together my whole fear puzzle so I can more fully surrender it to Him and share in a way that may touch anyone reading.

Paul says in Romans that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. NOTHING!!!! I am an INFJ personality type. Feelings weigh heavily on my thinking,reacting,choosing. Feelings are not always as i want them to be. Feelings cannot and do not separate me from the love of God. This is the kernel of truth i want to focus upon and burn into my soul so strongly anytime fear rears its ugly head. No matter how hard fear strikes at me, in whatever way it does so, I am secure in Gods love by Jesus Christ. For some reason, I need that reality and truth to hit me in a way other than my mental apprehension. I thank God He is always helping me to learn and grow no matter how much I struggle,doubt or sink in my own quicksand.

Does this resound with you at all??? I hope you come across words and thoughts that hit home with you day by day.

Balance

Balance is tough to come by in many ways, for me anyway. Just like moderation ya know. All things in moderation. Tough to remember and do when you are just desiring a lil more icecream, a few more cookies, a lil bit more pop,and well yes food is a toughie there lol. I so very much want balance in my mind and my way i treat myself and then live out what and who i am. I know probably if anyone went back to 2005 and scanned this blog over the years it would tilt and lean wayyyyyyyyyyyyy in one direction -the struggle,pain,aching and hard side. I guess i tend to write on those themes so much because as i have said before, I dont share them really except for inside my own mind and to God. Sometimes when talking to a close friend or a counselor, but that is always censored to some extent.

I was googling about emotional immaturity and found some sites that spoke to me. One said that children who experience a major trauma, like losing a parent, can become stunted developmentally and emotiuonally at that age. It made me think, because i was 8 when my father died. Do i really have a lot of internal emotional makeup of an 8 year old??? The whole being stuck on fear of death made me think in ways possibly I could. As I have shared numerous amounts of time on here, fear of death has been a constant shadow as long as i can recall. It is not a rational fear because i believe in God and Jesus, yet a whole slew of things gets all jumbled in me concerning it all. I have had some good meditative times at night lately. God seems to help my mind function better at night in this way. Accepting the reality of death and how Jesus makes it a nonissue as far as fear goes is my focus. That all goes awry though when my mind goes off on ideas about failing to have enough faith/obedience or failing to have been a good enough servant and many other things. i want to be like Solomon in Ecclesiastes where he speaks of a time for everything. Let God be God and not chase nor strive after the wind. Balance.