Down and Down

This rabbit hole seems unending.  It's very difficult to right oneself when everything is moving.  As soon as I seem to become oriented, I realize that I haven't actually hit the bottom yet.  Perhaps it only feels that I've righted because everything around me is falling at the same rate for a bit.  But pretty soon it all lists oddly in the air and disorientation ensues.

I have long believed that we could only find what we need in God.  I have even come to know it through many circumstances that have forced me to rely only on Him alone.  He's even shown me that He will not only keep his word to provide, but does so quite literally "exceedingly, abundantly more" than I could, would, or even ask.  I have even begun to live in this confidence in a real way.

But no sooner do I realize I have progressed than a chair tilts and the rug flutters and the whole room disengages in the freefall.  I guess I should just stop arranging the furniture.

But that's just it: I don't intend to arrange anything.  I just find a chair nearby and decide to pull it under me because falling is tiring.  And then a glass of water floats by and I'm kind of thirsty.  But then a table floats up and I conveniently place the glass on it, snatch the lamp from the air for some better lighting, and before you know it, there's another falling room.

Even though I've been learning all these things I recently realized there was yet another level to it all and I was finding validation in something other than God.  It was innocent enough but sinuous and sneaky nonetheless.  You see, in doing the things God has for me to do, I become first agitated and then irritated and approaching angry when people don't allow it.  Not because I want what I want, but because I see how this or that person could so benefit but won't.  It's like delivering a really great present to someone from a rich relative.  I know what's in the box and know how perfect it is for them.  I've even got a similar one from this same relative.  But they won't open it.  I tell them how great it is and they still just sit it in the corner.  So I tell them what's in it and they smile and ohh about it, but say they'll get to it.  And this can go on far more than you would imagine.  It would be easier if they openly rejected it, but to keep piling up unopened presents is pert near insane to me.

So I go back to God confused and uncertain.  Did I screw up?  Did I miss something?  And that's when I realized recently that I am finding validation in helping others, even anonymously.  I am hinging my joy on other's actions...on their acceptance of these gifts...on their good.  Rather, I should be secure and stable enough in God's dealings with me that others' actions, even actions toward God, do not create anxiety in me.  And there goes the room again.

I have to come to fully trust God to meet their needs as he meets mine.  My eagerness for their good, my sadness at their pain is not to go away, but to be absorbed in God's full provision for us all.  And this is something I truly do not know how to do.  I can't even imagine how I could be content having the power to ease loved ones' burdens and not being allowed to do so.  Which means I will as usual, have to totally rely on God to do it.