Thursday, April 5, 2012

Digging Through the Muck Within


This becoming is so . . . difficult. So hard on the ego. It's messy even. To discover those deep-seated flaws that I've carefully hidden these many years.

I mean, I've gone to church my whole life. I confessed Jesus Christ as my Savior at a young age. Heck, I was even baptized - not by mere sprinkling as the Methodist Church I grew up in allowed - but by full-fledged dunking action in a farm pond (which, by the way, "didn't count" when I wanted to join a Southern Baptist Church a few years later & had to be immersed again by the "right" kind of person who believed the "right" things - aka, NOT a Methodist minister). I've played by "the rules." I've always been a "good girl", right? That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Then why have I been so pissed off with God for taking the identity I had painstakingly crafted for myself? After all, I did what He told me to do. I dropped out of the SA race. Shouldn't He be patting me on the back & telling me "well done, good & faithful servant"? And then shouldn't He be ushering me into a Promise Land of blue skies & butterflies & Beatles music & easy living?

And why do my children still fight so vehemently with one another? Full punches and kicks, along with a constant stream of bad-mouthing. Why does my husband still get on my nerves when he leaves his thousands of pairs of shoes in the middle of the floor & I trip on them yet again?! He does that ON PURPOSE you know.

And instead of those much-deserved pats on the back, why has He been exposing so blatantly the darkness that dwells within my deepest parts? Convicting me, even? Of ugly things within, like: I am self-absorbed; I suffer from self-aggrandizement; I am so ungrateful; I don't fully trust Him to have a better plan for my life than my grand scheme; I am prideful; I've been perpetuating the "brat syndrome" - you know that one . . . "but Daddy, I WANT it my way!" And, most telling thus far, I have not placed on the altar my ambition, my longing for acceptance from the populace. Ouch! Lyrics from a Rich Mullins song are playing in my mind right now - "I'd rather fight You for something I don't really want than take what You give and I need? I've beat my head against so many walls . . . "

Perhaps life was easier & more carefree when I was blind to my ugliness. Yet, I'm finding a certain freedom in this Truth, as ugly as it may be. I'm climbing out of the dark.

God help me, please.







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