I’ve been stuck on “[love] that is relentless in it’s determination that we be cured of our sins.” Is this what God’s love with relentless determination looks like?
How does the perspective of this as God’s love as relentless determination to cure me, to mold me, to heal me, shape my attitude and outcome? Usually I view God’s love as discipline, as gentle. This feels like the opposite of what gentle should feel like. But determined love? Relentless and determined. Those are feelings I know. I mean let’s be real that’s normally how I operate.
I don’t know how many of you study the Enneagram, but I am a one. Through and through, no question. This is how the enneagram institute describes a one.
This is the part where it hooked me.
“We have named personality type One The Reformer because Ones have a “sense of mission” that leads them to want to improve the world in various ways, using whatever degree of influence they have. They strive to overcome adversity—particularly moral adversity—so that the human spirit can shine through and make a difference. They strive after “higher values,” even at the cost of great personal sacrifice. Ones are people of practical action—they wish to be useful in the best sense of the word. On some level of consciousness, they feel that they “have a mission” to fulfill in life, if only to try their best to reduce the disorder they see in their environment.”
Enneagram Institute
Yes. 1000x yes. Also why is the enneagram so creepy and know me so well?
So I’m thinking that the difference between this- how I operate and understand myself to be, and what we are experiencing right now admist this crazy last few weeks of COVID-19 is CHOICE.
When I choose something, I prepare, weigh all the options, list the pros and cons, make my final decision and then go full force because I am full of energy, creativity, mission and focus.
But, this whole big bunch of crapball has been thrust upon us and the rules that keep changing nearly every day….
I. Did. Not. Choose. This.
Nor could I have prepared in any way for it.
“Although Ones have a strong sense of purpose, they also typically feel that they have to justify their actions to themselves, and often to others as well. This orientation causes Ones to spend a lot of time thinking about the consequences of their actions, as well as about how to keep from acting contrary to their convictions.”
Enneagram Institute
Yes. Okay YESSSSS!
When I read this, I DEEPLY understood this. Taking the last 3 weeks of my relentless determination, while waking up to daily challenges that I hadn’t even begun to consider 8 hrs before when I went to bed, it’s no wonder I find myself spinning like a top. A ticked off top. An angry, mad at the world top. A this isn’t fair stomping spoiled brat top. A I will not let this beat me, driven top.
Listen though. I knew I was spinning, I knew the warning signs. I saw them, but my mission was more important, my striving, my relentless determination to set this right for myself, my kids, my family, my business, that seemed to matter more.
Last Sunday, I typed this text out to some friends
“I am struggling in ways I never have before. I am not experiencing a crisis of faith or even a break in my relationship with God. I just can’t seem to shake this fog or funk or whatever it is. I usually can be cheery and upbeat and I can’t seem to make myself or get myself to. It has to be more than being isolated, or even the losses my business is experiencing, it can’t be because of the extra pressures of schooling my kids, or even the burden for the kids at church.
The real thing is I can’t figure out if how I am feeling is a bad thing, wrong. What if God is calling me to experience this this way- just bc I have always pulled through this way or that way might not be the same this time. So I know I am not losing my faith as much as He’s redefining it and that’s scary.
So as you can read I’m in need of your prayers. ❤️”
This past week I have just been sitting in it. In the funk, in what is probably some sort of depression. When I put a name to what I am feeling, when I placed…dumped all the feelings, frustrations, hang ups, and junk onto this imagined sheet in the middle of a room and named it that, an awareness came out. Every. Thing. feels magnified. Like I want to bite peoples heads off for talking to me, looking at me, chewing… LOL. It’s a good thing we are in isolation….
After the realization that I am probably working out of and through a depressed state of Bethany, the last few days it has helped me work at putting a fresh lens on looking at the last few weeks and forward at the next. I actually in reality got a ton of work done. We are surviving, in some ways actually thriving. I am learning, which is something I normally love. God is leading.
I mean, nobody eats apples around me yet, but it’s ok. Work in progress.
Finally I’m not here to rush it, push through and “feel” better, control the situation and make it happen. That’s an old Bethany way of operating.
I trust myself to God.
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