Dr. Judith’s God Line

Posts Tagged ‘character defects’

Just in case I thought I was cured of all my shortcomings, I’ve been reminded of what happens when I fall for the illusion of having control over my life and the outcome of my plans.

Forty days ago, I decided what kind of  lent I was going to have.  Note the I decided. First mistake right there.  Whenever I get into planning and attached to the outcome, I’m bound for Trouble with a capital “T”.

I was going to spend a lot of time with God.  I was going to have two prayer periods each day.  It was going to be centering prayer, and I was going to give God the opportunity to talk to me while I listened.  Big of me, huh?  It was going to be gloriously peaceful and joyous.  And when it was over, I’d be able to tell you how well I’d done, how faithful I’d been and how good I felt about myself keeping this promise to God.

What’s the saying?  Man (or woman) plans and God laughs.

Instead of all that great  and generous tithing of my time to God, my plan fell apart after two or three days.  I was thrown into a tempest of self-will run riot.  And I didn’t settle down into quiet prayer until Palm Sunday–one week before Easter.  And even then, it was hit or miss for the rest of the week, right up to today–Easter Sunday.    So what happened?

I became anxious about the upcoming publication of my book.  I was afraid that no one would read it and no one would benefit from it.  Dire fear of failure overtook me.  Forget the fact that I would never have been able to write it without God’s help.  It’s His book and the outcome is His.  But wait, I also have a great need for attention.  What if I’m interviewed and I have nothing to say or I sound like an idiot?  What if people notice me and expect me to be spiritual and holy all the time?

I became irritable, restless and discontent.  I had trouble sleeping, and when I’m tired, I’m not easy to be around.  I was becoming critical, bossy and judgmental.  I started to feel insecure, unsure of how to do anything right, especially anything new.  I wanted someone to tell me how to use Facebook and Twitter effectively, what to say for U-Tube.  Hold my hand and walk me through.  Feeling so insecure and dependent, I was certain that Hazelden’s marketer and publicist were going to leave me in the dust and not give me the help and attention that I needed.  If they weren’t giving me their time, they’d be giving it to the other authors in the spring line-up.  And one of them did a fabulous U-Tube presentation–intelligent, personable and not a single um or er!  I’d never be able to do as good a job as she did.  Competitiveness got added to the list of old familiar defects.

A hundred forms of self were rearing their ugly heads.  And each time a new one showed up, it brought along one or two others I hadn’t entertained so enthusiastically in a long time.  I don’t know why this should have surprised me.  When I’m stressed, I try to control my life.  God falls by the wayside, and I replace Him with my pitifully defensive ego.  When I’m stressed, I don’t act like Sue or Jane or Joe or Sam.  I act like myself, and the character defects show themselves in ways that are my old ways, not yours.

The solution is always the same.  Put myself and the book God helped me to write in His kind and loving hands.  Surrender.  Remember that I am powerless.  All I can do is the next indicated thing and leave the results to God.

Maybe it was His plan that I spend the lenten season buffeted by the winds of ego so I’d remember that He loves me and has a plan for me.  When I life put Him first, I begin to relax and know that as the mystic Julian of Norwich said, “All will be well. All manner of things will be well.”

Today I put a copy of our book, God: A Relationship Guide at the foot of the cross in my family room.  I am expressing gratitude for all He has done for me and leaving the outcome to Him.  Perhaps my Higher Power isn’t the only one having a resurrection on this Easter Sunday.

He surely knew I was hurting, confused, and sad.   I had asked for His help over and over.  So why did He take so long? He always answers prayers, but often not in our time.

I was listening to a teaching by Thomas Keating on the story of Lazarus.  Jesus’ great friends, Martha and Mary, let Jesus know that their brother Lazurus was VERY ill, and they begged Him to come.  Now we know from scripture that Jesus didn’t need to be present to perform a healing miracle.  He could have just said a quick prayer to His father, and it would have been done.  But instead, He not only didn’t heal Lazarus from afar, he actually didn’t even head to Bethany until four days later, after Lazarus was dead, buried and rotting.  Why even bother?  Lazarus couldn’t be saved, and Bethany had become very unsafe for Jesus.

The obvious answer, according to this teacher, was that Jesus could perform the greater miracle in raising Lazarus from the dead under circumstances that led no room for question.  He was definitely dead!  Also, this dying , being in the tomb for several days and rising is a precursor of Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Now people would know such a thing was possible so it would be easier to accept the resurrection.

Scripture stories are often layered just as our lives are often more complex than meets the eye.  In this preaching, Fr. Keating goes on to say that God often waits until the moment is ripe in our lives for us to learn deeper and more important lessons than we might have if He acted at the first moment we asked for help.  In the case of this popular story, at least three people benefited personally from the delay.   Martha who liked to dictate how things should go, even to the point of meddling; Mary who loved Jesus in a deeply contemplative way to the point that she never took necessary action; and perhaps Lazarus who may have had too much pride or too little faith to ask for his own healing.  (Forgive me, Father Keating , if I’m getting your presentation a bit muddled.)

The learning for each person in the story had to do with giving up of character defects, which are manufactured by the false self, or ego (which stands for edging God out) to defend us from the worldly dangers which would destroy it.  We have to die to self to be truly free.  And God waits until the time is right for us to be willing to let go and let Him be in charge.

All of this has been proven over and over in my life.  I still hold on unnecessarily to my defensive ego, but I am getting better and better with more life experience.  For years, I wanted to write a book.  I knew, in a general way, what I wanted to write about.  My surrogate mom and spiritual guide had taught me many sayings and methods to help me grow spiritually and emotionally.  I had learned to use her teachings effectively, not only in my own life, but to help friends and patients in their lives.  Over and over, through the years, I made a list of these sayings or methods, but that’s as far as I ever got.  I had too much fear of that empty piece of paper.   It took me a long time to realize that the fear was really my false self feeding up a dual dose of ego.  On the one hand, I was afraid that my writing wouldn’t be any good and no one would want to read it.  On the other hand, I both craved attention and recognition, and I was afraid that, if I got it, I wouldn’t be able to handle it.  I feared I would have nothing of value to say or that no one would be interested in what I wrote, that it would help no one and I would be wasting my time.  I was ashamed of my lack of faith which kept me from even trying.

Fear and ego distorted my true reasons for writing: honoring my second mom Ruthie and the many others who have contributed to my spiritual and emotional freedom throughout my life,  helping others to know God in a way that they too could become free of ego, bringing others back to God and most of all, celebrating my deep love and gratitude to God and His unending love for me.

It took a period of intense burnout in my professional life and my trying many different paths to change what I was doing with no success.  It took God apparently saying “no” over and over to all my plans which were based on security needs, rather than any true desire to follow those paths.  It took a moment of clarity to realize that I had to follow the desires of my heart and the Spirit within if I wanted to be cured of the anger, stress and futility that I was feeling in my life.  And it was at the moment when I was ready to let go and let God that I was finally able to listen. God reminded me through a friend of mine that I had always wanted to write a book. Maybe this was the time. After all, this pursuit was close to my heart.

In April, 2006, I enrolled in a creative non-fiction writing class and began to write.  A year and a half later, after many more bouts of fear and surrender, I the book was written.  Then I had to let go once again as I tried to find an agent or publisher.  It was entirely possible that the entire lesson and gift was in the writing itself.    In the fall of 2007, after many rejections, I began to visualize  an offer arriving from a publisher or agent by Christmas.  It was the day after Christmas when I got the call from my editor at Hazelden with an offer to publish the book which was then called Hanging Out With God.  He told me it would be scheduled for March, 2008.

More surrenders.  Changing the title, making God more accessible to a wider audience for God as each of you understands God, learning to wait and then wait some more.  Once the editing was done, it was in the hands of the marketers and publicist.  What, I couldn’t be in charge and dictate what they do?  Oh, I forgot again.  It’s God’s book, not mine.  The outcome is His.

I’ve been directed by the Hazelden team, who have gotten everything right so far (Of course they did. After all, didn’t God choose them?), to learn social networking so I could let everyone know about the book.  I have by now almost fully entered the twenty-first century.  I am on My Space, Facebook, and I am learning to Twitter.  In two weeks, I will be the no doubt befuddled owner of a Blackberry Storm, trying to tweet the word:

God wrote a book under my name.  It is called God:  A Relationship Guide.  It is available now on the web sites of Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders and Hazelden (www.hazelden.org). And sometime this week, you will be able to order it on this site by clicking on the picture of the book cover.

All of this has happened in the fullness of time.  The yeast had to rise and leaven before the baking could be done.

I don’t know what would have happened if God had fixed my burnout sooner, but I’m pretty sure that waiting for the miracle to happen was worth it.
How has God made you wait in your life? Can you see the benefit?

I have noticed how easy it is for me to say, “I can’t” because I am afraid that I can’t.  A whole lot of things remain undone when I slip into that sort of thinking.

The most recent instance of this has to do with a brochure that I wanted to get done.  I am starting a group called “Write Your Spiritual Autobiography”.   I want people to know that I am doing this or, obviously,  I won’t be doing it.  With my spiritual mind, I wholeheartedly believe the saying, “Build the field and the people will come”.   But my human mind counters truth with thoughtless and idiotic comments like, Who are you kidding?  You don’t know how to do this.  People will never pay for it.  It won’t be any good. And so on and so on.  Forget that I have credentials up the wazoo and that God is in charge.  I just get doubtful.  And that is part of the human condition.

I try to put my fears aside and proceed with the brochure.  I have Microsoft Publisher on my computer.  I open it up and stare at it.  I decide it is written in Greek or Chinese.  I can’t possibly make sense of it.  I head off to Barnes and Noble to check out books on using this program.  After 45 agonizing minutes, I finally make a choice and go home to figure out what to do.  Well, maybe I should read it first.  I go over and over the very few pages that have to do with creating a brochure, feel overwhelmed and quit.

A few days later, I was telling a friend about the problem.  She told me she had a great program for making brochures, and she showed me how easy it was to use.  I obtained a copy of this program, opened it,  and I was immediately swamped with the same confusion as I had experienced with Publisher.

I believe that confusion is a feeling that serves the purpose of keeping us from making decisions we don’t want to make or taking actions we don’t want to take.  Confusion is paralyzing, and I am convinced it is fear-based.  So the question I must ask myself is What is my confusion about?  What am I afraid of? Surely, it is not just whether I can figure out the computer program.  No,it had much more to do with the fears I mentioned before.  That is, Am I actually competent enough to be of service to others through the facilitation of this Spiritual Autobiography group?

What to do about my paralysis?  Take it to God, of course.  Wasn’t this His idea in the first place?  Why am I getting so ego- involved?  Have I forgotten that “Of myself,  I am nothing.  The Father does the work.”?  I have this wonderful bit of scripture engraved on a piece of wood and keep it hanging on the wall above my diplomas as a constant reminder of the true order of things.

Just after I begged Him for help, I was reading an article that was metaphysical in nature.  Through this writing, I was reminded that God is within me.  If I allowed the Holy Spirit  to think and express through my heart, He would.  The next day when I opened the Publisher program, I affirmed  with deep belief  God within me will create the right brochure so that I can proceed in doing His work. The fear left me and,  amazingly,  I was able to figure out the previously mumbo-jumbo computerese.  It took a few sessions and a question or two directed at my computer literate friend, but my mind was cleared and the task got done.

Does confusion ever block your good?  Has anxiety ever kept you from trying things?  God can always help.  Share your stories in the comments section.  Or, if you have any questions about things you are facing, ask away.  I will answer your requests.