Blue Like Jazz

My mood is so uneven.  I am fine and then irked and then in tears.  Irritations abound because difficulty abounds.  Where is my peace?  Where can I ever be safe from the tornadoes of the everyday?

The answer lies, I know, in the hollow of His hand.  He is big, He is mighty, and He is shelter and rest.  My inability to relax and rest in His peace is its own sort of learned helplessness, I suppose.  Like the animal who refuses to leave its long-dwelt cage even when the door is open, so I too am trapped in my own insecurities.  This is a lack of faith, because I know (but don't - can't? - really trust) that He is security, that God and my husband as an illustration of God are perfectly trustworthy and out for my good. 

Maybe I've been running so long, kept and held so long as an object of responsibility rather than love, that I find it difficult to conceptualize what it means to be loved, what it means for others to care for real about my happiness and my success.  I'e been told all my life that I am self-absorbed, that I am selfish, that I need to learn to think of others.  Looking back, did I really ever have a problem, or were those who so instructed me simply revealing their own self-absorption?  I don't know.  I have worked at humility, but will I ever arrive?  What's at play here?  Are my womanhood and short stature relevant to my emotional state?

I am a loving person generally.  Love is what drew me to God, and love is what drew the Lord to die for me.  I would say that love is a, if not the, defining characteristic of my life.  I care about others, or at least I think I do.  How do I appear to others?  Do they know that I love them, or do I seem concerned only with self?  My goal is not to impress others, but to be a representation of truth if I can.  No one can see my heart but me and God.  I worry about my own motivations.  Self-doubt has been both bred and instilled in me; nature and nurture are a double-whammy.

What do the two great commandments mean?  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and like unto the first one, love your neighbor as yourself.  The Law is LOVE.  I have never had a big problem loving God or others, but do I love myself?  Do I honor myself as a creation of the Most High God?  The questions come easy, but the answers never may.  In this area I am, as in all things, a work in progress.

"Everybody sings their song the way they feel it, everybody closes their eyes and lifts up their hands."
-Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz