My anxiety keeps growing.
I keep thinking, there's no way I can be this happy. I can't possibly be this fulfilled or this successful, or this satisfied. It's going to end up costing me big.
I keep thinking I'm going to have to pay for all this good stuff later on, maybe soon.
What the heck is going on with me? Where are these thoughts coming from?
Anyway, what's the worst that could happen? I stop jogging and put on fifty pounds and feel depressed? Or I turn eighty one years old and nothing that I wrote ever got published and all I have are enough rejection slips to paper my room in the retirement home?
Grant you, that is depressing. But think of all the wisdom I'll have by then, from managing rejection! I'll be like a paragon of compassion. Depressed nursing home workers will sneak into my room and tell me how depressed they are because they can't pass anatomy 101 and I'll know exactly what to say to them and every body will call me "Sweetie."
Besides, I'll have my children and their children, if they have any. And Keith, in a motorized wheelchair, terrifying the other residents by going too fast and taking out decorative side tables by accident.
Hope is a frightening thing sometimes. Well, maybe not hope so much as expectation. I have high expectations of myself now, and I'm starting to live up to them. That is terrifying.
I can't help but notice that in these thoughts, God holds so much vindictive desire. Like, God is leaning out of heaven saying, I curse you for raising yourself up too high. You will crawl before me, you will suffer, you will fail. You're stiff necked and arrogant, hard hearted and I will break you down. Like my own personal Old Testament, version 2.0.
But that isn't God, you may protest. God gave you the gift of writing, He wants you to develop it and use it, not bury it. He wants you to invest yourself in other people's lives by revealing your own in words. He wants good things for you, He's a good God.
Well, that may be true, in fact, I think probably it is, but I still carry a voice of this false god around inside me, because I served this god for years and he is also a jealous god. He pops up sometimes. He usually pops up when I'm feeling successful or proud of myself.
Sometimes, I'm like one of those tribal peoples who have the custom of not naming their children until they're a year old, for fear of drawing a bad spirit's attention to them. If I just laid low, and didn't talk so much about how good I was doing, maybe god would pass over me and leave me be.
But no, I have to go and blog about how awesome I am doing! If that isn't god provoking, I don't know what is.
I don't know how to resolve this, to be quite honest. I have a really hard time correcting thoughts that have to do with God and religion, because growing up I completely absorbed the teaching that I have no authority in those areas, and must accept instead the teaching of people who are in authority over me.
So, frequently, I just feel helpless, like a ship tossed in a stormy sea. I know above the storm is the open sky and the real God. But I'm all caught up in the turmoil of my own thoughts.
And then the only thing to do is to throw the whole thing into the hands of Christ and close my eyes and wait. I know He'll sort it all out for me. He's good like that.
In the meantime, I'm going to keep on writing, even if it never comes to anything in the end. I still think it's worth doing, just for its own sake.
