Harassed and Helpless

If it’s true that most women are highly emotional beings, I am perhaps one of the oddities in my gender population. I’m emotional too of course, but it has always been a matter of mind over heart for me. I feel, strongly too at times, but strangely enough, this heart has been well trained by the rationale mind to take a back seat in many of my decision making for the most parts of my life.  For example, when an emotional event triggers in my life, the brain goes on autopilot and tells the heart that there are wrong or right emotions (which really, there isn’t. feelings are just feelings, there are no wrong or right feelings) and instructs it on how it should really feel – it sometimes condemns it for not feeling how it should really feel, based on what the mind believes to be the right response for the situation.

The heart was prison to my mind, fettered by cool logic. Emotions are not really important and should not have scientific weightage in decisions made. Logic – carefully thought out pros and cons and consequences of actions are what truly counts.

This mode of decision making pervaded every area of my life from work, career, relationships and even activities undertaken.

All this was true up until a few years ago, when I began to realize that I actually don’t know what I love to do. And this would not have been an issue till one day Ps Larry had asked this elderly minister how was over 70 years but still going strong in ministry on how he kept the fire going. The wisened gentleman had replied by asking Ps Larry what he loved doing. Sports? Eating? Talking? Dancing? Whatever it was that he loved doing, he should continue to do, and use that as a platform for ministry. That conversation stuck with me a long time, because I want to finish the faith strong, I don’t really want to peter out. And then, I realised, I actually don’t know what I loved doing. I’ve always done what was needed or what I believed brought the most benefit collectively or what I believe was right. Not that I’ve not enjoyed what I’ve been doing, but whether I loved doing something had never been a factor for consideration in most of what I did.

That was when I realised that something needed to change, and I had to cajole my heart out once again. I needed to find out, what I did enjoy , not should enjoy. Not that I should act on everything my heart desires, but I should at least know, what my heart desires, and if I be truly aligned to the Spirit of God, then some of these heart desires, would be from Him too.

So I opened the door, and in the beginning, it was rather scary but I begun to fully explore.. I felt free for a moment, that I could finally now live not because of obligation but with passion.

Now few years down the road, I now see why I had first stuffed the heart away – because the thing with passion is that there are godly and there are also ungodly passions and ungodly passions messes up my life and lives of others. And I hate things to mess up my life. The heart is deceitful above all things – it whispers grand promises to you, tells you what would really really make you happy, but when you do get there, it tells you that actually , it is something else would make you really really happy.

When my mind dominated, it was easy for me through self-discipline, to redirect my paths and do what was right. But now pandora’s box is open, my heart is out.. and the heart unlike the mind, is hard to discipline.  It is so hard. It is like an unruly calf, a child with ADHD, a stubborn straying sheep. Trying to get it to obey feels like grasping in the air, you’re not sure whether you got it and after many tries of reigning it in, you realised you’ve failed. And you realize, you CANNOT do anything about it. It is not within your control.

Worse still it made me feel like a failure.. and that could possibly be the worst feeling a perfectionist could encounter. Tampered by the fact that God had taught me to love failing forward with Him over the years, it is nonetheless still a  fairly sucky feeling to have. To want to be perfect for God, but know that you are not and cannot be. Also knowing that you cannot imprison your heart once again, because that would also mean you’d never truly love. I just felt stuck, and I hated it that I couldn’t do anything about it. And how I hate not being able to do anything about it!!

But with all these internal struggle going on inside me, it recently dawned on me that it is perhaps to this end that God is wanting to bring me to. To make me realize, I really am truly helpless, that I really am not all that strong and well disciplined when it comes to the true nature of myself. That if I really want to live the life that Christ purchased for me, I will have to live by His ways, by His Spirit alone. The discipline I have in my daily living, in my work or studies will not win the battle against the nature of my soul. This battle belongs to Him. And I’ve got to swim with it.

In today’s homily (yes, homily.. I attended a traditional Lutheran service today, and it was a pleasantly refreshing change), the speaker gave two beautiful analogies:

When a baby has messed up his diapers, the parent does not yell at the baby and ask him to clean up the mess himself, the parent cleans it up for him/her.

When the wife is sick from cancer treatment, and weak from the processing, the husband does not look at her disheveled hair and untidy pyjamas and ask her to comb her hair and neaten her self, he combs her hair for her and dresses her.

Such is the love of the Father for all His children.

Such is the love of the eternal Groom for His Bride.

I forget sometimes, the love of my Father, the love of my eternal Groom. I try to be that baby that tries to clean up after herself, only to get more messed up. I try to be that sick wife, always thinking I got to look perfect for my husband so he’d love me,  only to end up missing out on experiencing the love He has for me – that if I trusted in His love for me and not try to fix myself up all the time, I would come and experience His tenderness in my life.

I forget that I am harassed and helpless, sick  and in need of a doctor , and that was how He found me and already loved me.

Father, I need your help.. desperately. I know now I cannot discipline my heart like I discipline my mind. For so long I’ve learnt how to be strong for myself, to be independent and self-reliant in my life, but now I realize that to be fully and truly Yours body, soul and spirit, I need to rely on You and not myself. I don’t even know how to begin, but I’ll start by asking You. Help me, Lord.