Security. Confidence. They’re heavy words. It’s difficult to spill words onto a page without forcing them into a usable mold. But I know that’s exactly what this practice is about. It’s the necessity for a space to simply exist. As I am. As you are. Without effort. Or analysis. And editing. Which I’m already doing.
It’s about moving the existence of self from our heads to the space that we occupy. I need to experience the space I’m consuming. I need to exist in it. Maybe you can relate. I too often feel trapped inside the walls of my head. Confidence seems to be the key to unlocking that door. I just don’t quite know how to take hold of it yet.
I seek validation from myself and others to convince myself I’m ready for things. But just as easily, I convince myself I’m not ready, and we’re back at square one. The only cure for me seems to be just going for it, unsure. With as little time possible spent inside my head. So that’s the practice I’ve been attempting to cultivate.
Still it’s not a total cure, in seeing how unsteady I feel from the outside. I’m reeling inside until someone relieves the pressure with awkward validation. I say it’s awkward because I don’t know how to accept it. It’s probably more awkward for me than for them. But I question and doubt if they really meant it. Sometimes I wonder if their compliments are concealing something else entirely. Perhaps a threat. And while all this is a learning curve that comes with due frustration, I’m still finding it’s better out here than in there. At least out here I can navigate the threats and use them to learn and to grow. In there, I’m just hopelessly stuck.
So what does all this say about me? What truth lies exposed beneath these rambling thoughts?
Deep insecurity.
For which, I’m not even sure there is a cure.
That’s when I consider the miles I’ve come walking with Jesus into my own skin. And clearly there is One. Only One. And perhaps that’s the biggest challenge of all. I seek so many other answers to this never ending equation for which there’s only One answer that counts. It’s so simple, it’s too simple. And over and over, I near miss it entirely. When will I learn that Jesus alone is the answer I crave? Every answer, to every question.
“Pick something you like, and see how it grows.” Thank you, Emily Freeman.
Everlasting Daddy, hear my prayer and answer. Teach my soul to start with Jesus every time. In everything. More than anything else, I want to see Jesus take form and grow in every part of my life.
It seems that Jesus is teaching me something. Maybe the problem isn’t that I retreat but how. By default, I retreat back into my head. That’s where I feel safe. But that’s the most dangerous place of all. It’s there that my insecurities eat me alive.
Maybe growing into this Jesus within me retreats from out here, from the outside. In Him.
“Keep me safe, O God. For in you I take refuge.” Psalm 16:1
“… in YOU I take refuge.”
Not me.
Maybe that’s exactly the point. To meet the world, just as we are. Without a single answer if only to say, “We’re here. And we’re covered.”
Because of Jesus.
