I had that feeling again yesterday. The one where my life feels like it is spinning out of control and I can't get grounded. I absolutely hate that feeling! I've had that feeling a lot lately (the past several months). I used to be a major control freak. Now I'm just a minor control freak :). I like everything to be in perfect order. Chaos unravels me. Growing up there were so many things that I couldn't control that controlling my environment became my defense mechanism. What I realized this week is that somewhere along the way my performance of how well I controlled my environment directly affected the identity I gave myself. If there was no chaos, I could be happy. If something went wrong, I was so full of shame and defeat and struggled to get over it. I also realized this week that a pattern of mine is if I mess up something a little bit, I throw in the entire towel and give up. I know the moment this pattern started in my life - I was in college - 19 years old. Went through the biggest moral defeat of my life. I didn't feel there was any getting things back on track. I say that now with hindsight - took me years to realize this is what happened.
So this week there have been things that I couldn't control that have sent my environment into a tizzy....and some things that were directly my fault. I spent several days feeling out of control and beating myself up. Finally yesterday I had the revelation that I will mess things up from time to time or handle things the wrong way - usually as a result of flesh patterns in the case of handling things the wrong way. I messed up some things this week just from being absent minded - I could hardly even believe I did those things - so far from my norm given my control freak status. I finally received in my heart yesterday that each day truly is a new day with new mercies from God. I am still moving forward with life and it is okay to leave the fleshy stuff behind - it isn't who I really am - it is just who I revert back to from time to time. Once I figured that out and apologized for one of my big blunders, Peace settled back over me. WOW - that was huge for me. I've experienced this uneasiness my whole life when things went wrong or were different from how I pictured them going, and to realize I could just leave all the junk behind and move forward without it was crazy. It was one of those "and just like that I was free" moments. Glad I finally got to that place. Thank you God for showing me. Another layer of onion has been removed!
