Sometimes feels like a big fight!

The past two weeks, trying to center my heart in God has felt like one long fight, with God, with my will (and my won't), and my ego.  Over and over I have caught myself yelling, sometimes at myself and often at God.  When I yell at myself the harsh, critical tone of voice and meanness of how I treat myself for not being who/what I think I should be only make me feel like giving up, crawling into bed, and letting despair creep through my being.  When I yell at God, it's another way to express my dissatisfaction with how I perceive myself to be functioning (or not), but both kinds of yelling at myself are about me trying to either BE God, to tell God exactly what I think God should be doing in me.  Yelling at God is as damaging as yelling at myself, and just as unproductive, but it also prevents me from paying any attention to what God is actually doing/being in and around me. These are both different from trying to do my best in the moment, because when I do that I am making use of my gifts and, by grace, able to be present to God, others, and the needs of the task at hand.

I know from past experience that only surrender and consent, "OK, Lord, do in me what you know needs to be done," get me out of this vicious cycle of thinking I know how I should be.  But oh, how hard it can be to get to that surrender.  My ego tells me I SHOULD be able to figure this out for myself, and I SHOULD just be more disciplined, and I SHOULD be mature enough by now that I don't need God to have any part in how I function.  The world tells me I SHOULD be independent and not lean on the "crutch" of obedience to God, "whatever that means," and that reason/intellect SHOULD be sufficient.  But when I wear myself out yelling; when I remember whose I am and am reminded of all the times that surrender led, not to the change I was fussing about, but to even deeper transformation (and often the discovery that God was working on
changing something quite different from what I was fussing about); then I return to a deep peace and trust in God the author of my existence.  I may not stay there very long, because that perfectionist, critical spirit will SHOULDer its way to the front of my awareness, and the fight will begin all over again! 

But that's OK, as much as I have a hard time believing that.  Roberta Bondi says "One of my favorite sayings of the monastics is that prayer is warfare to the last breath. Prayer is hard work -- and painful a lot of the time because it makes us face parts of ourselves and accept parts of ourselves that we'd rather not." ("Learning to Pray:  An Interview with Roberta Bondi, The Christian Century, March 20-27, 1996, accessed at www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=302).  When I look back over the past two weeks, I can see many graced moments where God broke through my yelling to show me what was getting in the way, and where I experienced God clearing away the rubble of my resistance to letting God be God.  Thanks be to God!