I Am My Own Best Counsel

Just reading old blogs that I haven't touched in months, and there they are: the words I have been stuttering out over the last few weeks as I have sorted through this mess to find some answers. All my brilliance, all the thoughts that it took all my energy to dredge up were already here in black and white, right under my nose. At least now I know I am on the right track.

I have a big decision to make, bigger than other ones I thought were big. I have been offered a good job, the one I want, and my chest tightens every time I think about it. If I take it, I might burn out and never recover (hello, Fear! You've been MIA lately); if I don't take it, then it'll screw me out of a job in the fall, the job I really really want. I feel...trapped. AHHA! Oh self-illumination, you've done it again. I feel trapped. I do not feel free to make a decision because both feel like the wrong one. Is there another one? Is there something in between, or something so far outside the box that it makes these look like twin suckers? 

Leanne, you have to make a decision. This is your life, and you're never waking up.

The Voice of Truth Says "This Is for My Glory"

When we ran our day camps this summer in Toronto, our team of interns each had a teaching day on a certain topic. Wednesday’s theme was prayer. One of the things we talked about is how our natural reactions in the face of hard situations are usually not pretty: gossip, complaining, blaming, fighting back, panicking. We called this “picking up your sticks and stones.” But what we were teaching them was how these things only fuel problems, not extinguish them. We need to pray, because prayer is our powerful weapon; we ask God to fight our battles for us.

I feel like I am in the middle of a battlefield. The playing field? My life. And I cannot fight. I am the battlefield, so I need to have someone fight on my behalf. I need Someone to fight for me.

And praise God, He has given me the strength to run in the right direction. Instead of turning to malicious gossip or fighting or drinking or boys or any other thing I have used in the past to confront or avoid problems, I’ve given it to God. This finally gives me a picture of what “turn the other cheek” is really about. I am being forced to literally say: “Okay, you slapped me good. Ouch. That really hurts. ...Now here’s the rest I have to offer, here’s your opportunity to slap that out of me too. I promise I won’t fight back.” I feel like I am finally learning the meaning of true humility.

God spent all summer humbling me, and now it is being put to the test. But ultimately I need to keep in mind through everything that my ultimate authority is the Father, and He is who I take my directions from. So if He asks me to submit, I submit; if He tells me to cut my losses and get out, I do so. It’s my summer’s pattern all over again: learning to respond to God, whether He says go or stay.

This is also forcing me to really live out my newest mantra: is this for the glory of God? If not, sorry I’m out of here. In every situation.

This is by no means the most difficult period of life that I have faced (see blogs September 2009 through June 2010), but it is for sure the most personally challenging. It’s about self-discipline and setting healthy boundaries and giving everything to God. I have no other choice. This is the place I was in anyway, but now it’s an extreme. I do not know what to do.

I feel trapped all over again.