Tuesday, January 25, 2011

My Brain's Spaghetti Junction


I don't know why I'm writing this morning. It's raining outside, cold and just plain miserable. Sure, I'm in a coffee shop, all cozy and warm, listening to the weird new age music and the subtle clinking of cups and conversations, as well as the lady clicking away on her keyboard behind me. She must be a prolific writer. Jerk!

It's just that at times like these, when I feel I don't have much to write about that I'm finding out that my mind is simply a spaghetti junction of thoughts. Now don't get me wrong, I don't think I have anything that profound to say, it just helps me to straighten out a few of the highways - send a few vehicles out in the right direction, so I write in order to get there.

Life is a funny thing. Last night I was pondering it with Melissa and we were talking about God's gift of sleep, where we are finally forced to surrender completely to his control. No longer are we under the allusion that we are little gods when we sleep.

Sometimes I wish I could sleep all the time. It's a taste of the peace and shalom that, as a believer, I think I'm supposed to have all the time. As I looked into a few posts back, there's something really exciting about the reality of God in the believer's life. Understatement.

The fact that we do everything "in Christ." With his presence active in the middle of our lives. His life "templing" within us is pretty amazing. Sometimes it makes me feel a little schizophrenic. Whose thoughts are whose, how do I pray and whatnot?! And at others it gives me great peace and courage.

The times when I feel most depressed are when I don't believe in this core truth: that Jesus is within me. For when I do, his peace and riches are mine, and I really don't "need" anything else. It's a rare and restful place to be. One which I covet to experience more often.

Yesterday I was sharing with some friends who are bold enough to admit they are as needy as me, how I swing from pride to fear and back from fear to pride. It's like life is giving me "underdogs" and I'm going "Wheee!" happy in my little world of unhappiness.

Rarely do I ever find my true center. The reality based in reality that "I am way worse than I can imagine and way more loved than I'd ever dare hope." But when I do, wow, it makes a difference. All of the sudden I have freedom, freedom to be me, freedom to live, breath, turn off my brain and simply rest. It's a wonderful place! With the Psalmist I think of the broad place of beauty that God has cleared before me.

So today, if you're like me, at once prideful and fearful, swinging like crazy, unable to slow down with a spaghetti junction of freeways running through your head - thought-cars slamming into each other, flipping over guardrails and bursting into huge balls of flame, my prayer is that you'd find Christ within. The one who ushers us crazy humans into peace. The one brings true quiet. And the one who really loves you. He loves you.

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