On Perspective (That Changes Your Mind)

Sundays seem to be the ferocious hunters of my week, each time in succession they devour my days. Every time I notice, it is Sunday again, hungry and changing everything. Three Sundays ago, I started a post entitled Libido, but had a bad reaction to the anti-inflammatory/narcotic cocktail I'd been on, and was feeling ill. Or, that's the excuse that I prefer. Honestly I was a little nervous about publishing the post. It isn't even what you think, I could actually have gone with a less controversial title, but what can I say? I have a mischievous side :) Anyway you can look out for it, coming soon. I guess the real reason I was uncomfortable is because I was feeling a little hypocritical. Libido is a post about the drive for life, it is about feeling inspired, taking the opportunities to feel your heart and see it, and admit to what is on its inside. I didn't feel genuine in publishing it then because in the weeks since I've written last, I've been feeling very restless and frustrated, bound even, by my circumstances.

These circumstances of my 2011 have led me to be like a throbbing, exposed artery of emotion, severed from the limb it services. Like a slit wrist, I felt as though my hopes bled out of me, leaving me cold and unaware of where to look for the warmth of Future. That feels dramatic, only because it is. My perfect retrospect vision tells me about myself. Aren't we all an arrogant sort? Spoilt?

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11 NLT

This is what I know. A thousand cliché conversations and a thousand hungry recitations have built these words up like a lighthouse in my heart, yet dismay could still envelop me. My will, not Yours be done, Lord.  Bless me indeed.

I have, in the last couple weeks, faced the prospect of another field trip under anaesthesia in order to straighten my much improved, but not fully functional left leg. I am not cleared to resume my job, three months after my pleasure trip to Maracas Bay, Trinidad. I peer at my position from the unlikely vantage point of virtual unemployment, in a strange land that shouldn't be, and I feel victimised and guilty. Why would this all happen? How come I'm not as happy and as hopeful as I should be? Whose fault is this? Surely the plans for good mean my good and my hopes for the future. Surely I know enough to know everything. Surely there is no fairness in God keeping the secrets of life and withholding my good from me. Am I really this egocentric? This selfish and self-indulgent?

Yes. Yes I am.

I find it hard to see these words in print, hard to think of eyes and minds working over my ugly admissions of big, fat, self. But I leave them there, because I want you to see. I am human, too. I live on earth. I look at the words and I understand the full weight of  their error and the lies of evil. Yes, I believe in the devil; not just as the concept and source of evil, but as an entity that expresses itself in the real world. I believe that the way the devil works is through an infection of the mind. The same way viruses swarm the earth on the wings of insects and through spores that travel in the air, I believe that the devil carries out evil work on the tongues of strangers and unwitting loved ones. Even occasionally, through our own consumption, we take evil in and experience it swimming through our minds.

I think no one should assume themselves past the point of Thing X. One shouldn't assume the self too optimistic, too informed to fall prey. Despair and hopelessness is not necessarily overpowering, but sometimes is just a vague suggestion in the back of your mind that you've been hospitable to for just a little too long. It is easier said than done to keep your perspective, to know that life is a rough sea, beautiful in its ebbs and flows. It is as though when high on the crest of a wave, seeing all around us for miles we forget what it feels like to be looking up at the very crest from the point far below where it will plummet.

Inside the crashing wave

Perspective changes everything.

I'm not here to sum everything up in a Christmas bow of hope; to tell you that despite life sucking periodically, everything is just so special and dandy. No, I'm not. I will say that for me, in my vantage point beneath the waves that pummel, I listen to lyrics like "Oh come let us adore Him" and I acknowledge the hunger in me that responds to that invitation. Yes, I'll come to adore Him, Christ the LORD.  Unchanged by the life all around me is a hunger that is only fed by a resonating truth that I get and am drawn to; vast and unfathomable, yet somehow accessible.

Not my will, but Yours be done, LORD.