Softer or Harder?

Since I created this blog last week I have been experiencing excitement at the idea of getting started, but I have also been scared at the idea of getting started... nothing seemed to me to be relevant enough or intelligent sounding to kick start such an important thing to me at this time in my life.

I started reading the shack a few weeks ago. It has been taunting me from the shelf for over a year now. It came highly recommended by the giver and highly criticized by others. So this gave me the affirmation to ignore it all this time. I have to say starting this book was one of the best things I have done in a while.

All through the book I have been highlighting like a nerd in school with parts and excerpts I really like. There are even a few that I had to read out loud to my husband who of course had no idea why I was doing that. Half way through the book I finally found an excerpt that took my thoughts out of my head and put them on the page.

"Broken humans center their lives around the things that seem good to them, but that will neither fill them nor free them. They are addicted to power or the illusion of security that power offers. When a disaster happens, those same people will turn against the false powers they trusted. In their disappointment, they either become softened toward me or they become bolder in the their independence."

I am a broken person trying to put myself back together and learn how to love myself inspite of myself. I will not explain the reasoning here, but if you know me or maybe I will explain in time, you know this is true. The second part of the sentence about centering myself around things that seem good but enslave me was so true. It struck a cord with me. That is what teaching was for me. It was a way for me to feel like I had power over someone. I didn't feel like I had power over my life, my decisions, where I was or where I was going, but I could boss teenagers around and control their grades and sometimes whether or not they understood something and this made me feel whole. The part I did not realize was how it was filling the 'hole' in my life with the wrong things. No one has power that has not been given to them by God. This false sense of power is what I was basing my self-worth on. So, when this came tumbling down around me for doing all the things I thought were right, I was devastated. How was I going to be able to help people? How was I going to make a difference in the world? How was I going to do anything? Hiding myself and my own problems in the wake of someone else's and riding on the coat tails of my own teacher 'power' was actually burying my own problems quite nicely. They of course came bubbling to the surface when there was no more security.

I have since turned myself against the 'false power' of teaching and now towards the word of God. I am finding refuge and self-worth in the power of him and learning about him. I would say that in all my wrong and poor decisions, the best thing I have done is becoming softer towards him and not the opposite. I believe that losing everything and being forced to be with just myself for a while, not the power or the distraction of other's problems, has allowed me to start over and for the better. I have picked my weeds and now I am tending to my flowers.