Thoughts on the Every Day

Thoughts on the Every Day

My eyes open to a messy room and my mind remembers a list of this day’s to dos, and I groan. I get things done and I erase them from the list and I’m tired so I go to bed without cleaning my room. There is night and then there is morning so that it can start all over again.

 I almost always worry as I work. I worry that I won’t get everything done on time, or done well. I worry that nothing I do will help decrease world suck. I worry that I will fail school and will be unable to find work. I worry a lot about running out of money. I am (probably unnecessarily) afraid of homelessness and starvation. I worry that people will look down on me. I worry that my friends and family will abandon me and that I will never fall in love. I worry about my silly selfish heart, and I feel guilty for all this selfish, untrusting, worrying and then worry some more as I wonder if my heart will ever change in a noticeably life altering way.

I want to be a new woman. I want to love others more than I love myself. I want to be confident in the only one whose love for me matters, and I want to be brave enough to acknowledge Him – Jesus – in all that I do. I want to loosen my grip on my money and be more generous with it instead of attempting to find hope and security in a few pieces of thin cloth and plastic. I want to focus less on human notions of success and more on letting Jesus use me as he will.

There is a daily battle in my life. Every day, when I open my eyes and the worries climb into my mind, I have to remember that I am loved and forgiven. I have to accept that forgiveness all over again, while attempting to remember which things don’t matter. I have to let go of my worries about school, my purpose, money, what others think, and my own failure to be good. Instead I try to trust, follow, trust some more, follow some more, and accept His perfect gift of forgiveness and love, and place my confidence not in my own ability, but in that gift.

It’s hard to do all this, especially when my body is so used to mechanically obeying the old worries. I complete the things on that list, scratch them off, and add more, all because I want to succeed in the eyes of others and find security in money and human love. Some days it feels like my whole life is a robotic process designed on the old ideas. I crave a dramatic life changing shift, but it’s been my experience that, for me at least, change is slow.

It could be that there is something wrong with me.

It could be that this is just how it is.

I don’t know.
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