Where the road leads next

Surrender is not an option.

To surrender is to admit defeat, and I will be damned if I will ever admit defeat. That was my position on just about everything until last Saturday.

Stubborn? Me? I never really thought I was, but I could certainly always see stubborn from here. I looked at my position on things a little less black and white, it was simply survival. I have always had to fight so it was perfectly natural to hang on to what I believe come hell or high water. When faced with the mandate of self denial in a broken home, hanging on to you is all you got.

So it should come as no surprise that my personality is a mix of easy going forcefulness. I think they call it passive aggressive. I am passive about most things but look out if you touch on something I am passionate about. If thinking about murder is a as bad as doing it, I have been homicidal. Cut me off in traffic and my natural reaction is to follow you home and bury my fist in your head.

I wish I was being dramatic about that.

Thankfully I have always snapped myself out of that kind of thinking but rage is a feeling most of my siblings know all too well. Apparently it is a family trait.

At the heart of rage lies a wounded insecure child lashing out. I am certain this is not a clinical diagnosis of rage. I arrive at this because I learned to rage as a child. It usually manifested itself during times of helplessness, or being "wronged" or being afraid. Take a step past the inflicted child and rage is all about control. There is no time more vulnerable than childhood, so if I have control issues, I learned how to cope then.

Last Saturday a series of events lined up in my life. There was nothing dramatic about these events. I didn't have the desire to run my neighbors over or anything like that, but the realization crept into my mind that I was trying to control a situation I had no control over. Before Al-anon I would have happily locked horns with the problem and try and wrestle it down no matter how impossible the chance of success might be. They call that insanity.

It may have been the lack of sleep the night before, the comfort of the bed cradling me, the chill of the air against my face in contrast to the warmth of the covers, but whatever lined up during my Saturday nap was divine.

I saw what appeared to be a book case full of tall thin flat diamonds stacked on end. They were similar is shape to diamond Christmas cookies, but much thinner, narrower and made of a light alloy or plastic. I remember audibly saying to God, "I give you control" and these tiles, or chips, or whatever started pouring out of their container. The cascade began at the top as a few tiles in the center simply fell over off of their tip. There were no shelves, they were all perfectly balanced one on top and next, and as they poured out they made a sound like dumping Lego's on hardwood.

The funny thing is I wasn't asleep. I was very much awake and aware of everything around me. For a moment the vision became more real and once the event was over I was left lying there as before.

As I thought about this later, I don't ever recall actually giving my life over to God. I thought I had. I have certainly attempted to. But it wasn't until this moment that I actually felt like something changed in me.

This week has been a continuation of the same theme, although much less dramatic. It is interesting to me how one can know what to do, practice it for a time, forget what works, only to remember it again. For all my complexity and deep understanding of things of God, I still act like a sheep.

Thank God I still have a Shepard.