Settling and Control

I just realized that I hadn't posted in over a month. It's crazy how fast time goes when you're wasting it, which is what I feel like I've done with a lot of my time this year. I go into most weeks having very great intentions about what I'm going to do that week, what I'm going to get accomplished. Most of the time it doesn't happen though. I'm going to work on my paper. I'm going to hang out with kids more. I'm going to be more intentional about all my conversations. I'm going to organize my desk. But for the most part, I just get by doing things like they've always been done.

I tend to criticize people (and by "people" probably is more a stereotype of some conglomeration of most families in the suburbs and disgruntled government employees) who just settle for what's given to them, that don't really make anything out of life, but just do what's easiest so that they can get by. But I'm realizing that everyone has great intentions. Who really looks at their life and says "You know what? I just want to be comfortable. I don't really have dreams. I don't really want to make the most out of life. I just want to survive." But somehow we do end up settling, we do end up, and people all over the world live lives that they didn't really want.

What holds me back is mostly fear. I'm afraid that if I really dive into life, I'll loose the parts of my life that I love right now. I know I think that way about God, anyway. I assume that if I really open myself up to Him, that He is going to take away everything that I love. The fact that He loves me is transforming. And I don't let it touch me. In the same moment, I ache for it and reject it. I'm don't want to loose control over the things that I "love", however imprisoning that controlling may be, because I'm terrified, TERRIFIED, that that will mean loosing them all together.

And that's so backwards from everything that God's love is all about. It's about bringing life, not taking it away. It's about perfecting love, not loosing it. It's about everything that is freedom and life.

I don't know how to end this blog...I'm not really proud of how it's put together...or of the thoughts that started it. But I'm trying to understand it...and to live it.