Last week I decided to start ten resolutions for 2015. I felt fairly confident that I would be able to do all of these things, especially since they were things that I had tried to do before, but it's one week later, and I have not done one bit of any of it. Okay, that's not true. To be honest, I did get a fair amount of morning yoga in there, but for the most part, I started the year off with one big flop of a week.
Now I'm not here to make excuses. God knows I have a back for that. I'm here to follow up, and most importantly to be honest. I think too much of the time, our "Christian" examples and stories of other's lives only include the most beautiful, Christian aspects of their lives, and none of the real, true grit type of things that we all, if we were to be honest with ourselves, experience on a day to day basis. My goal with this blog is to give an honest and real look into a Christ follower who is a real person. Not a shinned up, glorified example of who I really am. So here is how I sabotaged my first real week of resolutions.
First of all, just to throw out the obvious, I did not keep my two blog post a week resolution. We are all here, a week later, with only one post for last week. Sorry about that. I also did a horrible job at reading. I read two chapters for the whole week. Yep. Two. But it's not about what I did or didn't do. I mean it sort of is, but it really isn't.
I got a nasty cold that set in about last Thursday. It came with none of the real alarming symptoms that get people to feel sorry for you, just the stupid little ones that bother you all day long and make you exhausted, but don't really merit taking off from work to go to the doctor. You know, constant nose blowing, eye watering, and the need to sneeze but it never comes? Yah. Horrendous while you're in it, but not the type of thing that convinces those around you that you really are under the weather. So after finding myself at the end of Thursday feeling exhausted and icky, I decided that I didn't care if I wasn't barfing in the bathroom, I was taking Friday off.
I took Friday off, and continued on through the whole weekend not feeling better at all. Still just as sick, if not worse, but now I was angry. I was angry because the week prior to all of this, in addition to making a nice list of resolutions that were now falling by there wayside, Teagan and I had decided to start reading and following a book called Don't Limit God. The theme of the book is to allow God to do all that he has always wanted to do in your life by not limiting him with our disbelief. So here I was, barley into the book with my husband, and I was sick as a dog. This was not suppose to be how things were going. This was not suppose to happen to someone who was believing God for everything in her life! And I was convinced that I was believing God for everything. I thought I was. But to be honest, I had really been trusting in myself.
I knew that God was my source, and that I needed to not keep him in the box of my unbelief. But I took that and became so fixated on what I needed to do on my end for everything to fall into place, that soon, I was putting more faith in myself than God. I had all of my ducks in a row. I was going to spend fifteen minutes here, ten there, and gradually become this future version of myself that I had grown to love. But bit by bit, little increments of time turned into my entire day, and I was not making time for God anymore. I had gone from having God as my root and foundation and what my entire life revolved around, to making God a little pill that I take to keep crazy Candace at bay. I had begun to fall in love with works.
After a weekend of being sick, I decided that I couldn't take another day off. I needed to go back to work. So I did, all the time being convinced that I personally needed to take on this cold and command and grow my faith as much as I could. That, my friends, was the most exhausting Monday that I had gone through in a long time. By four o'clock, I was beginning to wonder if anyone had ever had a cold so bad that they wrecked because they fell asleep while driving. You might say that I was having a little bit of an inward pity party. Pushing that thought out of my mind and clocking out, I breathed a sigh of relief that my day was finally done, and drove home wreck-free.
Sundays are when Teagan and I have been reading Don't Limit God together. So the day before my Monday of exhaustion, the chapter we had last read was all about spending time being still with God. We had agreed to take time individually every day to do this. After the tiring Monday I had just had, I was definitely ready for a slow of pace, so I grabbed my prayer list and sat down in my closet.
I started reading through my list, but something wasn't right. I stopped, and it was as if God was saying to me, "finally, you stopped!" I put my various lists down and leaned back. I really was exhausted, and I had an amaizing headache to top it all of. I tried to quiet my mind as best as I could, and actually practice being still.
Being frustrated that I was still sick, and that I was not yet healed, I asked God, "What do I need to do?" By this time, I was thoroughly frustrated, and ultimately convinced that I was personally responsible for my lack of healing because I wasn't doing enough. But what I head God tell me was not that I needed to pray for five hours or that I needed to watch some sort of healing DVD. He told me that I needed a nap.
Really, God? The God of the universe is telling me I need a nap?
"Yes. And what are all of your worries? Tell them to me. Trust me, and go take a nap. Rest."
I was incredibly relieved at that prescription. There was not a bone in my body that was against that plan of action. On my way under my covers, I realized that I had been trying to survive off of putting faith into myself. I had let go of putting faith in God and decided that if I just did this, or if I just got in a certain mindset, then things would fall into place. And God, being the gracious and never forceful God that he is, let me go down this ridiculous thinking. He let me experience the stupidity of thinking that my actions are what matters. But he was always there waiting for me to listen and trust in what he was going to do.
Today, I called in again. I took the day to rest, and trust that the key to all of this is God, not me. And trusting in God does not mean that you use all of your might and willpower to summon God's action by creating some sort of disbelief-free zone. Trust does not also mean "to struggle" in Greek. Trusting God is simple. You just let go of the situation, and take a nap. Okay, not literally. You can't take a nap at work and get away with it by saying that God told you to trust him (but how great would that be?). The point is, when you "let go and let God", you need to really let go. It's not a case of you letting go of one side of the wheel and letting God take the other. Just tell God. Tell him once what you need, and trust him, and listen to him. I had done the former, but neither of the two latter.
Today, I felt better than I had in a while. I had begun to forget what it was to be able to breathe through my nose! I know that I was just trusting in myself the whole time rather than God, and that was the only thing holding me back. So do I think that I should scrap all of my goals for the sake of trusting in God? No. God is still for the goals that I set. Health, and reading are still great areas to try and improve on. But If we set goals for ourselves and set our eyes on all that we do or don't do, then we are going to experience failure and spiritual dryness.
In this month of goal setting and goal failing, we must remember to keep our eyes set on God. Yes we are trying to build better habits, but even in the things that in the physical look like they are completely up to us, we must learn to trust God. God is and always will be our true source. It is surely not easy to let go of things that the world (and even religiously confused people) tell us that we need to do fix ourselves. But God is ready, and he is waiting for us to trust him, and take a nap.
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