Grapple…it was the Word of the Month for January/February. Guess we need to carry it over into March, too.
I gotta tell you…all this grappling, although I know it’s necessary, is starting to weary me a bit.
While I am certainly benefiting from all the stuff I’m studying and reading and learning, a lot of it is making me grapple with a lot of my long-held beliefs about God and doctrine. Why do I believe what I believe? Where does that belief come from, and is it truly founded on the Scripture by which I claim to live? If it does, then that belief becomes positively reinforced. If not…then I have to do something about it.
And then I grapple with what I need to change, how I need to adapt to these new perspectives. How do these truths affect how we look at life, church, ministry? What will these changes look like? How do we flesh them out? What comfort zones are going to be totally abolished during the process? (ANSWER: Most of them.)
And I grapple with the healing process going on in my own soul. I’m looking at my own brokenness, and how my leadership style changes, and needs to change, as my personal healing continues. I can easily see, for example, how my codependent tendencies caused me to be very controlling and even interfering in my pastoral style. So when I see people in my group struggling with their own issues, in obvious need of some sort of pastoral care…I know how I used to handle it. How do I handle it now? How do I engage with them and with their problems in a life-giving manner? I know what it used to look like; how should it look now? What should I say–what shouldn’t I say?
Things like that.
Right now everything feels topsy-turvy to me. I like to have my legs under me, I like to know which way is up, and I don’t feel like that right now. I’m not really depressed or anything; just uncomfortable. I know it won’t always feel like this; but I just sort of felt like complaining about it. 🙂 Just keeping it real.
How about you? Can you relate? Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?
Wayward Son
Musician. Composer. Recovering perfectionist. Minister-in-transition. Lover of puns. Hijacker of rock song references. Questioner of the status quo.
I'm not really a rebel. Just a sincere Christ-follower with a thirst for significance that gets me into trouble. My quest has taken me over the fence of institutional Christianity. Here are some of my random thoughts along the way. Read along, join in the conversation. Just be nice.
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You bet I can relate.
Question, though – how do you know it won’t always be this way? I don’t know if Jesus ever wants us to be comfortable. Even if we end up with faith that lets us get out of the boat and walk across the water toward Him, I don’t know if that experience could ever be “comfortable”. Ya know?
I understand this feeling. I wonder if it will ever go away though. I think I built systems around myself (religion) to not have to feel this way. Without the system my balance seems always off. This actually is not a bad thing though. I have to set my sights on Father and what I can see him doing to gain any perspective on what is up or down, right or wrong and how to react. It pulls me into a continual need to look at Him to know what to do. I wonder if Jesus ever really felt stable. He was marked by so many times where he went off to talk to the Father. And in the glimpse of his last time talking to the Father in the garden before his death he certainly did not seem sure of what to do or even if he wanted to go through with it.
I think our questions and not being so sure of things now are actually going to be benificial in the future. The thing that scares me the most sometimes is being sure of something again.
barb–thanks. Thanks for the remarks.
jim–To answer your question…I guess I *don’t* know it won’t always be this way. (Double negative?) My experience has been that there are seasons of shaking, shifting, and transition, and then times of respite, seasons of rest. God rocks my world for awhile, then lets me stop and catch my breath, and…here we go again. 🙂
I guess that’s what I mean about knowing it won’t always be this way. But I don’t expect to get too comfortable, or for too long. 🙂
Yup! I totally get the grapple thing. I’m feeling pretty good at this point, but still something will hit be upside the head and beg to be grappled with all over again… ay yi yi.
yep I do,
I go to a mega church, and this Sunday the sermon made me question to many of my believes and what was real. I question so much now instead of believing everything the pastor says hook line and sinker. So what in the heck is going on inside of the BODY!!!