Fighting a Winning Battle

"When you live alone, you become more and more like yourself," Pastor Dale said, several years ago. My brother was with me, and we exchanged amused glances, as I had only within the past year or two embarked on my solo living experience.

It's not as funny anymore now that I know what it means.

It isn't just becoming more set in little preferences: more sure that the toilet paper should come over the TOP and the toothpaste tube should be squeezed from the BOTTOM and the bath mat should be laid pattern side UP and why aren't all of those things obvious?

It isn't really about becoming more set in my beliefs and opinions. I sometimes feel as though they've become more unsettled in the past few years than anything else, which is probably good because before I probably clung too tightly to too many opinions just because they were the ones I was used to having.

I think the worst part about living alone is that you have a lot of time to notice yourself, and to see yourself as you see you. It's also the best part, because as much as I'd rather not see my own failings, I am confident that the ability to see them comes from the Spirit. And if the Spirit is poking around down there in the dusty darkness of my inner self, it's bound to get cleaner.

Sometimes I feel as though that the Spirit is working on an especially dirty room, one that I've been shoving more and more things into and trying to ignore. A few years ago there was a cleaning out of the room that was chock full of knowing-it-all.

This year, I think the Spirit's working on a few rooms at once. The one getting the most focus tonight seems to be the distrustful control freak room. The one that holds all my long beloved and nurtured beliefs that nobody looks out for me except for me, that nobody wants to help me, that nobody can help me, and that everybody, everytime, everywhere, will always let me down.

This year's broom so far: the Harvest Youth Group Spring Banquet.

You know how sometimes God lets you do things the way you think they should be done as a discipline tool? Letting you try things your way so you can see how your way is wrong? Well, this year I launched into the banquet with my usual preconceived notions that I must do everything myself. I delegated nothing. I said, "Don't worry, I'll do that." I sighed melodramatically to myself when somebody forgot what I had told him or her at least fifteen times already.

Tonight, after telling a large number of teenagers to meet me at church to practice at 8:30, I arrived and found that there was a prayer shower going on in the gym, where I had planned to rehearse. About 20 women were sitting around eating cookies and cooing over four new babies, and I almost cried. And then I almost exploded because that's less embarrassing than crying. And I was rude to several sympathetic women and also to some who sort of laughed off my distress.

Strangely, I haven't been really worried about the banquet this year. I'm still not, deep down. I know it will all come together. And on some ego-crushing level, I don't think anybody really cares how much effort we put into it, anyway. It's a church fundraiser, not Broadway.

But it could have been better if I had gotten over myself and asked for help back in the beginning. That's what's really killing me. Or, hopefully, just the part of me that wants to hang on to control with both fists even if it comes with a semi-annual nervous breakdown.

Every time something goes wrong, I hear a voice saying, "See? This is what you knew would happen. You can't rely on anybody!"

This year, God has given me grace to counter that voice with specifics. Janessa. Andrew, David, and Emily. Chelsea. Matthew. Michele. (That's for starters.) Every friend who has said "It will be okay," or hugged me just a little bit longer, or asked if she could do anything for me. And then there's the grace I've been given in that I've not been angry at the kids this year. For as much as this has been the worst year for rehearsal, and for my organization, I have loved the kids more this year than any other, and that's from God, too, because my frustration with the situation hasn't spilled over onto them as often as it has in previous years.

The Father loves me.

Christ lived, died, and rose for me.

The Spirit is at work in me to make me more and more like Christ, not more and more like myself. And the Spirit (praise God) is far, far stronger than I am.

This kingdom's coming.

And it's okay if I cry while I wait.