To stay in the present means to take whatever's thrown at you and maintain an inner calm and peace throughout. That's what I'm learning now. God is teaching me resiliency. He is teaching me how to trust Him. He is teaching me that my guilt and shame are not too much for Him to take away. He is steady, persistent, and faithful. These are things that I am not. I used to think that living in the present meant doing wild things all the time - live it up and get drunk because you don't know when you're gonna die! When I die, I want to have actually lived. One of my favorite quotes is by Henry David Thoreau. Part of it says that "I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life." The way to do this is not by doing whatever I want whenever I want. Self-control has always been the hardest virtue for me, and this has affected my health, my relationships, my self-esteem, my peace. There is a way to stay present without going crazy. It involves surrounding myself with stable people and investing in healthy endeavors so that I'm not jumping from task to task with no plan in place. Easier said than done. I am definitely a work in progress.
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Praying for you precious.
ReplyDeleteIt's a struggle for me, too:) Probably, for most of us if we're honest. Thanks for being honest.
ReplyDeleteI often want to check out and be absent when things get tough. It's me, me, me wanting what I want and when I want it. I'm still learning to attend to the Holy Spirit's leading when those moments surface.
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