Seeker missles....I had a breakthrough driving back from a friend's house. I was trying to figure out this attention thing, this problem that I was having with my brain, my head, my heart. Something just wasn't right with even receiving attention in any of my past situations... and I couldn't figure out why I always felt like there was something wrong...though I had done nothing wrong...
And God reminded me of something - it's not what you do, it REALLY is your heart. This was never more real to me than in the silent-aside moment with God. Okay, see, I have "heard" this and "understood" this. So often, I feel though, that God really has to write truths on our hearts - to where you have this powerful feeling of truth, and it cuts through the fog.
BAM! Moment - I was seeking. No, I hadn't sought attention flagrantly; I wasn't crazy, over-the-top madness. I was very careful about my action... what I wasn't careful about was what was going on in my head.
I am primarily very internalized in the way that I deal with pain, etc. This blog experiment, here, this is only a portion of the whole. Yeah, it's all real, but it's not EVERYTHING. Can you imagine that? Millions more things run through my mind, claim my thoughts, run away, and much of it is what I call "subtext" - things I'm thinking and not really paying attention to, but they feed the "whole picture" thought I get - these "background programs" frame my thought(s) on any one thing. The problem is when they are grossly wrong. So, I have to slow down and and look at the subtext, the thought behind the thought, the programs keeping my brain on schedule and firing, and figure out what's creating the problem.
This is how I deal with a lot of emotional problems - I try to find the root cause. I try, and I fail, and then God really steps in, points, and it's like a surge that kills the electric fence in my heart that keeps me from getting better emotionally. That was what God did while I was driving.
Being that I'm internalized, a lot of my sin is. That's the problem - some people can't see it (until you really get to know me), so I might come off a lot better than I am, when really, my brain is a mess. I realized that for me, cleaning up my wild, inner emotions was part of the repentance - not so much external actions. Let me tell you, the battlefield of the mind is bloody. And what I realized about my desires for attention (from all people), was that, internally, I was seeking while fighting the external manifestations of it.
Holy Big-Words Batman, what does this mean?? It means I thought I was "fine", "humming along", "living it out" because I didn't "do" anything wrong. But I "thought" things strongly enough. So, in wondering why I didn't "feel good" even though I had "done good", I was asking God to help me get through the wash of crazy emotional unease.
And man, conviction settled on me as if God sat with me looked at in the eyes with the face of "Oh, really? Nothing?" Then the flood of personal revelation came over me. Just because I hadn't sought attention outwardly didn't mean that I hadn't willed my thoughts that way. It didn't mean that I hadn't sought it in my heart of hearts, regardless of my actions. My heart was all wrapped up in this, that, or the other - I simply didn't deal with the shame of really acting out. I was guilty, all the same. Wow, intense stuff. It really was about the heart - not even the actions.
So, what's the lesson here? I feel freed so much in some ways because just in knowing what I was doing oh so wrong, I was able to be at peace and stop the aneurysm in my brain caused by the seeking, seeking, seeking. The lesson though is this - I managed something dangerous - something only a skilled Christian and sinner can do - I managed to curb my actions by internalizing my feelings (as a way to get away from shame), but still seek for personal gain within my heart. And I had thought I was just fine - innocent. This is so deeply imbedded for me, I wish I could convey the depth of what this means. The reality is, we really need to check our hearts - the only indication that I had that something was wrong was a "feeling", an "emotion" - I didn't really have blatant actions to look back at. If you feel like something is wrong, check it out - because if you are obedient to God, I truly believe that even though there might be pain, you know that "peace" of "this is right." Don't neglect your signals of "this is wrong" even though they might be small - they could be your saving grace. Else, your own heart could be your undoing - and it is a powerful, powerful weapon indeed.
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