As you know, I’ve been taking some time off lately to heal my body and my mind. The last four years have been a rollercoaster of emotions and all the nice trimmings that accompany them. Learning about disease often helps me get through the process of mitigating the pain, symptoms, and mental anguish, and have learned that understanding the way I think is essential to healing. My doctors have told me that my physical problems, all of them, are a result of my inability to think correctly. Years of unseen anxiety and fear masked by the unconscious script that has been my programming. Imagine (pun intended) a permanent life change in your physical body because of the way you look at the world. I don’t have to, I have lived it. I often wonder if Paul’s thorn was the ill-effects of psychological and emotional illness.
Self-discovery has been both amazing and frightening. I have never really liked myself and in every aspect of finding my purpose and joy in life I have assumed ridiculous philosophies. I assumed that I only exist for the purpose of the joy of others and while I know this is not a healthy ideology or theology, I find it difficult to escape. I find ways in everything I do, for the benefit of someone else or some cosmic purpose or a perceived picture of soundness, goodness, and focus.
For example, when I clean my yard, it fulfills the need to maintain it, the idea that if I didn’t I was lazy, and to prevent anyone from thinking likewise. Because my yards are well-maintained, you can rest assured that my service to you is trustworthy. Now extrapolate this into everything. I mean everything.
Now before you come and say, “Awww, this is nice and sweet, these are good things.” let me stop you right there. These are good intentions or actions but their root is not. This thinking is a result of a damaged understanding of the world. My worldview is broken. For over fifteen years I have been withholding my true feelings about aspects of my life and my understanding of how Christian people should act in the world. I have long been calling the general “evangelical church” the “evangelical cult” for a reason. I can also pick apart political and social stances and show clearly how the grand majority of what many perceive as good according to the Bible is literally hateful and sinful according to the Bible. This includes socio-economic and political paradigms. But to talk about those things would just be another way that I feel I must invest in you. It’s not about me learning and being a human believer in the gospel of grace as God permits, it’s about me grasping, processing, and teaching so that someone else can be free, often keeping me imprisoned.
It’s funny how just hearing these words in my head is causing me to fight the guilt of the idea, not even action, of “considering others more important than yourself” or “putting others’ needs” atop my own. What most of the cults have taught us is to omit the portion that says, “looking not only to his own interests” (Phil 2:4). So for what its worth, I have failed to eat, save, understand, enjoy, rest, heal, love, breathe, or maintain myself because it has felt evil to do so. Long ago I learned this error, yet, I still live it out unconsciously…
every.
single.
day.
I’ve been emphasizing the path to joy, freedom, hope, and life over the last eighteen months and will continue. But I’m realizing too that putting myself into the plan of producing teaching or writing articles (I have outlined another book that will never see the light of day) is always an attempt to do something for others without ever seeing if what I am now understanding is applying to myself in regard to freedom and joy. I have discovered that a long time ago I built a series of structures and elaborate scaffolding keeping everything up and safe out of fear of anyone, even one person in my life, getting hurt or falling down. Well, when we build the house, the scaffold goes away. If something is unable to stand on its own, it should come down. It is not my job, nor is it in my ability to keep people safe, secure, sound, or sane. It’s not even my responsibility to keep anyone happy. I cannot and I should not try.
What am I trying to say? Well, in time, you and I will figure that out. But for now, I’m saying that I wrote this article for myself. I’m talking to me. And if you’re listening, great, I’m glad, but first, I need to grasp the reality that I don’t need to write to you, but I want to write to you, and when I do, it is not my job to make sure you read and get it, agree with it, understand it, or even care to apply it. We don’t have to talk as long as I am listening. Then, as life brings us together in a natural and organic way, we will share it with each other. So, no brand building here… no grand scheme… no future plans… just me talking about life.
I write about living life well.
That’s what I want to do.
There are some changes in the future. Those close to me will notice. Those connected with my voice will hear. Enjoy the ride… I surely am and have great hope for tomorrow – my gospel is true freedom.
Slow and easy.