The Clamp

I've become quite familiar with a peculiar type of clamp. It is the one you might utilize when things get too difficult or painful, and while this clamp is clearly psychosomatic and has no healing effects whatsoever, it comes dearly in handy in those dangerous situations where you might just feel something, when you don't want to lay your cards on the table, when you want to play it cool, when you need to control the situation. In many ways this clamp, this dear friend of mine, has made things easier, less painful, and best of all it can discount all feelings! It discredits all emotion, pushes it all out of you like a tube of toothpaste, and can pretty much make you a numb ball of nothing for a while. Useless, like an empty tube of toothpaste...

In recent years I have not had a reason to wield this power. Oh this lovely cage of protection! I welcome it now. It was surprising how easy it was to dig out of my old habits. Sadness is not in my nature, the disappointment will hopefully pass, and then one day I will look back and see the heartbeat of my life and for one little blip there will be a flatline. That part of my life where normalcy, my heart, and all things emotional took a little nap -- or went into a coma, however you would like to perceive it.

Problem number one: This tactic is old and worn. It takes a lot out of me to keep up the facade. I know it has nothing to do with this ridiculous theme of "guarding your heart." I know instead of trusting God, I just take control, place this glorious mechanism on my heart, and steer the wheel away from all species of hurt even if God wants me to learn from it. I feel like the little kid in Daddy's lap as we drive along. Sometimes I like to be ornery and grab onto the steering wheel, feeling smarter than Dad and pulling off the road where it looks like it might be too difficult to mud through.

How about mudding through, God? How about taking the hard road and not wasting all that emotional toothpaste?

Umm... Let me think about it.

heart flesh...

God teaches a lot through crazy human mediums. One of them of course being human nature. It is awefully easy -and natural- to look at a prize and want it so you push push push ahead to get it. Soon you're almost to the finish line when you realize the starting gun never fired.

Common sense advice: guard your heart.

I say crap to that.

The only One who can guard anything is Father God, our Lord to whom our entire lives are indebted. If not, then the minute we push, that will be the precise moment the prize will be ripped from our grasping fingers --nay, the moment our desperate empty fingers grasp at nothing. We cheat to get to the finish. We forfeit the prize. It was always our choice.

You won't hear a "no fair!" from me, God. I know who to blame.

God ate him with a whale

There's something in the air that the breeze is hinting at: Change. This is a new front blowing in and one that came suddenly. I think my tornado dreams are going to come true and if they were prophetic, this will come in stages and never with any fear or anxiety. And finally, when I'm strolling along a beautiful sandy delta in the ocean and a hurricane sweeps over me and drags me into the ocean I will resign myself to death, but not in a frightened, panicked way. I think, 'so this is what it is to die.' The feeling in the air is an intense desire to shed myself of flesh and my preferences and my wants. Sometimes so intense I feel like I live in a flesh prison. My Life-Chapter is Romans 8 and what are the first twelve verses? 'Put flesh to death and you will live.' Ok, God.

It's not just that I don't want to get eaten by a whale, I don't want to resist where God is directing me, I want to be useful, I want to surrender my life so that God can use it, I don't Want it to be mine! So, God, may I finally once and for all decrease so that You may increase? Can you strip me of my old passions to make room for new ones? Eternal ones?