Blowing up my treadmills

From my journal…

I have been blessed with a coach.  Teri (terifrana.myadventures.org).  This week we talked about blowing up the treadmills. The cycle of Fear and Pride. Pride resulting in rebellion and independence, and fear being distrust and doubt. For me BOTH manifest as control! So often Christians want to find a balance between the two. But God wants to destroy the circle all together and replace it with perfect continuum of righteousness (His righteousness) and Grace… not a circle or a balance, but a both/and. Christ who judged the world in righteousness yet also died for them in mercy and grace. Performance puts me back on the circle moving from fear to pride, on the treadmill of trying to make it all work. But God wants to blow up the treadmill. For now recognizing, hey that’s a treadmill is key. Then releasing it to the Lord.

I have started blogging again and am excited about supporting people as a health coach again. And I have noticed that I am already obsessing about my blog and have unhealthy attachments. I wake up wondering how many comments I have. I realize that my blog is doing well that day, I must be ok. I have attached some worth and identity to my success as a blogger (I am exaggerating of course, but only a little 🙂 I have jumped on the performance treadmill. I noticed it the other day and told Andrew that I thought I needed to set some blog boundaries. Every time we enter the kitchen lately I am snapping pics w my iphone. He laughed the other day and said hey babe, maybe that is your next ministry opportunity, helping people break their blog addictions, you could start a blog about how your addiction to blogging.

haha… I have now enrolled my husband in the madness. Laughing I told him that I was not sure how starting a new blog, about my blog addiction, was going to help free me from my addiction to blogging 🙂

I started to try and set some “boundaries” for myself, only blog twice a week, only check comments once a day etc etc. Basically I had just jumped off one treadmill and onto another one, my scheduling treadmill. The one that says, if I can just schedule my life right I will find peace and balance. I realized I was in a season of the Dark Night a few weeks ago when I told Teri that I just could not understand why everything that I tried to do, nothing seemed to work. She saw it right off, God was blowing up my treadmills. When nothing seems to work, not matter how hard you try, how much you pray, etc. Don’t start rebuking the enemy but look to the Lord. Could this be a Father-filtered time period where he removes all idols, all false comforts, securities, identities, dependencies etc in order to allow you the freedom to run to Him, to depend on Him, and Him alone?

The fear and pride circle really shows my inner sin. Pride = I dont trust God, I trust myself. Fear – harder to find, what is the real fear? What do I fear will happen if I dont control? it is that fear that pushes me to pride and to control. That hidden fear is the treadmill on hyper speed that God wants to blow up. For a long time I did not even see the treadmill. I thought this was just how life was, just how I was. Today, I am not yet always able to see it before I jump on, but as the speed gets turned up higher and higher and I start to get tired (day after day and year after year of running on fear, pride and control)… I am able to look down and go “hey, I am on that darn treadmill, Lord, help me off, and in an instant he will cut the power to that thing.” I am learning to depend on the Lord to open my eyes. I am asking him to show me the treadmill before I get on it and I am spending time in His presence, just listening. Now I “wait on the Lord” and trust Him to show me. The beauty is that when HE steps down from heaven and opens my eyes to the treadmill, he also kills the master power switch. Everything slows down. I still have human flesh and free will, and that flesh can walk over and plug the treadmill back in and turn it up to full speed and jump right on it if I chose. And I probably will. But once I can see it, I can name the treadmill. And thus, in a moment, I can turn back to my Father who has the master switch and is just waiting to kill the power to that old habit. Eventually, I will jump on that treadmill less and less, it will collect dust, and soon it will be tossed out onto the street. That is my process of sanctification. Treadmill by treadmill.