Posts Tagged: worry

“ON NOT WANTING TO KEEP STRICT RECORDS”

On November 24, 2018 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

I hate math!  I don’t like numbers.  I never have.  But sometimes, it is a good idea to make your hatred work for you.

So, true confession time: I have a runaway mind.  I tend to think inappropriate thoughts—lust, self-pity, judgmental thoughts, worry, regrets, you name it.  And once I start down that rabbit hole, I am like Alice.  I keep falling.

So, I’ve tried an experiment today.  I am trying to keep a strict record of all my inappropriate thoughts.  I haven’t had a lot of them.

Why?  I think because I hate quantification so much.  You might say that I have a case of “quantiphobia.”  (I thought that I was the first to identify this sort of irrational fear.  However, my illusion of creativity was punctured almost immediately by googling “the fear of numbers.”  Numerophobia and arithmophobia are fairly common.  Oh well!)

So, here is how I’ve been handling inappropriate thoughts today.  I have been trying to quantify them.  Trying to keep a strict account of my unhealthy thoughts is so intimidating that it is easier simply not to have them.

In a sense, this might be a variation on the tenth step of twelve-step groups: “Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.”  Sometimes, just being aware of my tendency to go wrong is a helpful thing.  Admissions of truth to oneself are never easy.  It is much easier to inflict truth on other people.

Furthermore, I have such an easily distracted mind, and such a contrarian mind, that trying to focus on any unhealthy thoughts for more than a second or two leaves me desiring to distract myself with healthy thoughts.  And I am so contrary that if I decide to concentrate on unhealthy thoughts, my mind is prone to rebel, and go to healthy thoughts.  (The same is true for me concerning healthy thoughts.  If I set out to think only healthy thoughts, I know it’s going to be a long and frustrating day.)

Now, I realize that this is exceedingly strange.  I don’t think that this approach would work for most people.  I don’t know if it will work for me over the long haul.  However, I’m going to try to make it a habitual discipline, and see if it will work.  One thing is for sure: It has helped me today!

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“THE NEED TO WEED”

On September 1, 2018 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“Prov. 24:30               One day I walked by the field of an old lazybones,

and then passed the vineyard of a lout;

31          They were overgrown with weeds,

thick with thistles, all the fences broken down.

32          I took a long look and pondered what I saw;

the fields preached me a sermon and I listened:

33          “A nap here, a nap there, a day off here, a day off there,

sit back, take it easy—do you know what comes next?

34          Just this: You can look forward to a dirt-poor life,

with poverty as your permanent houseguest!” (The Message)

I weeded the vegetable garden and the flower beds about two weeks ago.  I did a very fine job, if I do say so myself!  I even mulched the flower beds.

However, I have noticed quite a few weeds are already invading.  There is an old saying that “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”  The saying works at many levels, and not just at the national or military level.  The price of freedom from weeds is also eternal vigilance.

But here’s the thing: I am irritated that I worked so hard to finish the weeding work, and my work didn’t stay finished.  Irrational irritation?  Of course!  But there it is anyway.

According to Genesis 3:18, once the man and woman had disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, they were doomed to struggle with thorns and thistles.  Whether you believe the Bible or not, the thorns and thistles part makes sense.

Jesus warned that weeds come in various forms.  There are internal weeds, as well as external ones.  He said that the “seed” of the Kingdom of Heaven could be choked out in our lives by weeds.  And when it came to defining the weeds, Jesus named names!

“Luke 8:14   “And the seed that fell in the weeds—well, these are the ones who hear, but then the seed is crowded out and nothing comes of it as they go about their lives worrying about tomorrow, making money, and having fun.” (The Message)

Worrying about tomorrow, making money, and having fun—sounds like the story of my life.  However, be careful!  It is not tomorrow, or money, or fun that is the problem.  It is worry about those things that threatens to choke out everything in my life that is good.

The Greek verbs in the latter part of this verse are in the present tense, which suggests an ongoing struggle with the weeds.  There is no reprieve from the hard work of weeding out things in our life.

Are you sufficiently depressed yet?  Lift up your hearts!  I have good news!

But first, a story.

When I was young, we had a huge garden.  The rows seemed to go on forever.  When I was old enough to help in the garden, my mom would send me out to hoe and weed the garden, while she finished up the breakfast dishes.  I hated hoeing.

But, in a little while, I would hear a sound behind me, my mom with her own hoe catching up with her intentionally slow son.  Soon, we would be talking and laughing, and we were at the end of our respective rows.  Then, we would turn around and work our way back.  Row after row, until we were done.

I now cherish those memories.  There was more going on than weeding the garden.

God never calls us to the garden alone.  He is with us.  His companionship makes the difficult work, if not easy, at least doable.  And, at the end of our lives, we might just find a clean and productive garden, with produce not just fit for a king, but produce fit for The King.

(One of the best things I read on line while preparing this blog may be found at https://bobbieschae.com.  It’s a good piece of writing on weeding!)

 

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DTEB, “EMPTYING MYSELF FOR CHRISTMAS”

On December 23, 2017 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“O come to my heart, Lord Jesus,  There is room in my heart for Thee.”  (“Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne”)

“Let every heart prepare him room.”  (“Joy to the World”)

My heart is full this Christmas, but not necessarily full of good things.  I am full of regrets about my past.  Particularly, I regret how I treated (and did not treat) my family.  I have been selfish and controlling and sometimes even cruel.  Sometimes, I wonder if I have the regrets or if they have me.

And then there is anger toward those I feel have hurt me.  Strangely enough, these are often the same people that I have treated very badly.  Amazing how that works out, isn’t it!  And, of course, anger easily becomes resentment and self-pity.

And then, there are fears for the future.  I am old and my body is beginning to break down.  My mind is not quite as quick as it never was to begin with.    I worry.  I worry about my wife’s health.  I worry if I can be useful to God any more.  I worry about worrying.

So, I was out driving on this cold, rainy day, when I heard the hymn “Joy to the World.”  One phrase says, “Let every heart prepare him room.”

So, I emptied my heart out of all its regrets, all its anger, all its self-pity, all its worries.  I set out all this crap at the curb of my life, and said to Jesus, “Okay, Lord, there is room for you now!  Come on in!”

Guess what?  He did!

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“Fully Engaged with Life”

On May 1, 2017 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

My twelve-step sponsor made an intriguing comment a week or so ago.  He often does.  But this one has gotten stuck in my heart: “Be fully engaged,” he counseled me.

Sounded good, but I didn’t know the origin of the word “engage.”  So I did what modern people do when they don’t know something: I googled it!  Here is what I found out about the origin of the word.

“en·gage . . .

late Middle English (formerly also as ingage ): from French engager, ultimately from the base of gage1. The word originally meant ‘to pawn or pledge something,’ later ‘pledge oneself (to do something),’ hence ‘enter into a contract’ (mid 16th century), ‘involve oneself in an activity,’ ‘enter into combat’ (mid 17th century), giving rise to the notion ‘involve someone or something else.’

gage1

ɡāj/

archaic

noun

  1. 1.  a valued object deposited as a guarantee of good faith.

verb

  1. 1.  offer (a thing or one’s life) as a guarantee of good faith.”

So, being engaged involves putting yourself or something you value into something.  Being engaged means that I am not a bystander (innocent or otherwise) in my life.

I am sitting in a hotel room at Myrtle Beach, watching the waves coming ashore.  The sun is up.  It is, of course, easy to be engaged at this moment.  I am here with my sweetheart, enjoying a few days of vacation.  It is wonderful.

Yet, even here, it is easy to disengage.  After getting settled into our room last evening, my wife and I went for a walk along the beach.  It wasn’t crowded, but there were some folks enjoying the late afternoon.  There were kids playing in the sand, and some kids were wading in the shallows.  It was wonderful.

But, of course, me being me, I thought of our trips to the beach when our own children were little.  And, at that point, it was only a stone’s throw to regret for the dad I was and the dad I was not.  The past is sand in the cogs of being fully engaged.

The future can also mess with being fully engaged.  I worry.  I worry about retirement.  Will we have enough to live on, and enough to do some fun things?  I worry about health—my wife’s and my own.  I worry about how much longer I will be able to teach, to wait tables, to mow the grass.  I worry because the strawberries may be ripening (and rotting) while we are at the beach.  I worry about the fact that we only have a few days at the beach.  I worry about whether the weather will be nice.  I worry about . . .

Well, listing these worries is making me more worried (which is one more thing to worry about), so I’ll stop.  You get the point.

If the past and the future can interfere with being fully engaged, I now know what full engagement might look like.  It means being completely present.

I started this blog post at home, looking out my window on a grey April day. I was looking out the window, watching the maple seeds twirling toward their destiny.  I think that I was fully engaged.

I am finishing this post at the beach, with the sun streaming through my window.  I think that I am fully engaged.

Thanks, sponsor, for the very needful reminder!

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“A Snow Day from Heaven”

On January 5, 2017 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

Thursday, January 5, 2017

“He (i.e., God) directs the snow to fall on the earth . . . .” (Job 37:6, NLT)

The first snowfall of the winter!  I could choose to curse it, because I have to shovel it and because it may delay my sweetheart’s return home (or, worse still, make her journey hazardous).  Or I could worry about whether I will try to make it into work this evening.

Or I could see its beauty, revel in it, feel its coldness, build a snow man if it is wet enough, or make angels in the snow.

I think I’ll choose to do these last things.  I think that I will revel!

Will I still shovel it off the driveway?  Yes!  Otherwise, I or my sweetheart might slip and hurt ourselves, once this loveliness gets packed down and changes to ice.  But, as every child knows—even this sixty-five-year-old child—snow is for more than shoveling.

When I was little, I thought that the snow was wonderful.  Why should I think anything else now?

Mark Cable has a wonderful song called “Snow Day.”  In it, he says,

“It’s a snow day from heaven,

And that’s a slow day for free.

Abandon your agenda

Without penalty.”

How about helping me to make a band of snow angels today?

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“LETTING GOD DO THE HEAVY LIFTING”

On November 9, 2016 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“Bel (one of the names of the main Babylonian god, who was also called Marduk) has bowed down, Nebo (another Babylonian god, who was the patron of scribes) stoops over; Their images are consigned to the beasts and the cattle. The things that you carry are burdensome, A load for the weary beast.

2 They stooped over, they have bowed down together; They could not rescue the burden, But have themselves gone into captivity.

3 “Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, And all the remnant of the house of Israel, You who have been borne by Me from birth And have been carried from the womb;

4 Even to your old age I will be the same, And even to your graying years I will bear you! I have done it, and I will carry you; And I will bear you and I will deliver you” (Isaiah 46:1-4).

I got to be a grateful observer of an amusing and enlightening little vignette the other day.  My wife and I were visiting one of her brothers and his family.  One of my grandnephews, age five, had gotten a new bike recently, and wanted to bring it upstairs from the basement to show us.

His dad said, “You’re not strong enough to carry the bike upstairs.”

The little guy had an interesting comeback: “I’m going to bring it upstairs, but you’re going to carry it.”

Well, I could take this a number of different directions!  I could talk about visionaries (the little guy) and administrators (his dad).  Or, I could talk about the semantic range of the words “bring” and “carry.”

But I think I’ll talk about us and God instead.  (Talking about God is so much more fun than actually obeying God!)  Heaven knows we’ve been talking enough about politics here of late.  So, how about thinking about human and divine relationships?  Perhaps such relationships are where most of the real potential and perils lie.

Certainly, we humans have responsibilities to “bring” and to “carry” certain things.  However, sometimes we may forget who does the heavy carrying—God.  Some of us have stooped shoulders from carrying things and people we were never designed to carry.

We try to carry other people, and drop them.  We try to carry the load of our past mistakes and sins, and wonder why we feel so desperate.  We try to carry the future (it’s called worry), and wonder why we can’t relax.

The list goes on, but I won’t.

Isaiah reminded the exiled people of Judah that God had carried them all along, and would continue to do so.

Years ago, I had a systematic theology professor named Thomas Parker.  He pointed out the passage I quoted to begin this post, Isaiah 46:1-4, and then said something I’ll never forget.  “We have to carry idols.  The true God is the one who carries us.”

To finish the story that gave rise to this post, the little guy did bring his bike upstairs.  His father did carry it up for him.  Dads are like that!

We have a heavenly Father, who is only too glad to carry us.  Perhaps we should let him!

What are you carrying right now? Drop it!  Throw your shoulders back!  God is still in control!  He always does the heavy lifting.

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