Stressed as You Choose to Be?
Do you believe that you will be as stressed as you choose to be? Someone told me this recently when I lamented my stress level this week. . . Month. . . Year, if we're honest.
Stress is a pressure, so why sometimes does it feel like it is a pulling and tearing -- in one direction and then another, and then a ripping at the seams and everything tightly held in starts to fall down and out, where it doesn't belong?
If stress is a persistent pulling and tearing, all from the outside, how can it be a choice? How can I choose whether or not I will be torn?
Sometimes I offer that limb, wordlessly, and I allow the yanking to begin. Am I giving Pulling Rights to the right person?
But no no no, Pulling is not stress. Pulling is pulling. Stress is pressure.
Stress is a matter of my focus. It is a matter of just who am I trying to please? What is my highest place, in my mind? It is a matter of knowledge and confidence -- of who is ultimately responsible to take care of me?
The matter of focus is a Kingdom I simply cannot enter by working or keeping up. I simply cannot get there by being pulled. I can only be carried. I can only follow in footsteps someone else carved out for me.
I am seeking the footstep maker hard these days. He is a different person than I have ever known, and when I stop to think about it, I realize the deepest longing of my heart will not be fulfilled unless I turn off the voices, shut out the wild horses wanting to drag me up this road and down another, and sit with Him, and get to know Him, for who He really is.
The same person who said I'm as stressed as I choose to be, asked me later what day in age I'd go back to if I could choose any. I said Jesus' day, that violent and bloody and dry and dusty and thirsty and hungry day. I want to meet Him so badly. I know he was so busy, but do you think He would've paused for a cup of water with me, or you? I guarantee it. And then we'd leave never thirsty again.
Do You hear? I want to meet You so badly. . . Face to face. No darkening in-betweens. How long until You come for me?
Stress is a pressure, so why sometimes does it feel like it is a pulling and tearing -- in one direction and then another, and then a ripping at the seams and everything tightly held in starts to fall down and out, where it doesn't belong?
If stress is a persistent pulling and tearing, all from the outside, how can it be a choice? How can I choose whether or not I will be torn?
Sometimes I offer that limb, wordlessly, and I allow the yanking to begin. Am I giving Pulling Rights to the right person?
But no no no, Pulling is not stress. Pulling is pulling. Stress is pressure.
Stress is the pressure that I apply to myself to follow where I am pulled. My choice in the midst of pulling is whether or not to follow -- whether or not I will let him or her take a hold of my limbs and carry me away.
Stress is a matter of my focus. It is a matter of just who am I trying to please? What is my highest place, in my mind? It is a matter of knowledge and confidence -- of who is ultimately responsible to take care of me?
I am not to take care of me. I am not to do everything I am asked. I am not meant to be pulled. I am meant to follow. I am meant to be Cared For.
The matter of focus is a Kingdom I simply cannot enter by working or keeping up. I simply cannot get there by being pulled. I can only be carried. I can only follow in footsteps someone else carved out for me.
I am seeking the footstep maker hard these days. He is a different person than I have ever known, and when I stop to think about it, I realize the deepest longing of my heart will not be fulfilled unless I turn off the voices, shut out the wild horses wanting to drag me up this road and down another, and sit with Him, and get to know Him, for who He really is.
The same person who said I'm as stressed as I choose to be, asked me later what day in age I'd go back to if I could choose any. I said Jesus' day, that violent and bloody and dry and dusty and thirsty and hungry day. I want to meet Him so badly. I know he was so busy, but do you think He would've paused for a cup of water with me, or you? I guarantee it. And then we'd leave never thirsty again.
Do You hear? I want to meet You so badly. . . Face to face. No darkening in-betweens. How long until You come for me?
Comments
So many places in Scripture His return is described as "quick" or "sudden." In our Last Days vantage point, it doesn't seem so quick...Studying Isaiah last year and considering the long time that God has been working His plan, I got a bit of a different perspective on the suddenness aspect: as with so many of the (far lesser!) earthly occasions that we anticipate with such fervor that time seems to crawl by as we wait, when the Day finally comes it does seem sudden. After being so immersed in the shoulder-to-the-wheel work of getting through each day, boom, there it is! Only this will be a Day that never ends! (Always Christmas and never winter!)