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Your Shield...

             After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” (Genesis 15:1)

          Yesterday seems to have been the start of one or more battles for me. First, there’s the battle with the dog over the windows. Then there’s the battle with my attitude over life in general. I have six more weeks where I am, and I’m starting to get anxious.   I don’t like feeling anxious. I like feeling in control. Don’t we all? Scripture tells us repeatedly not to be afraid, but to trust God. Does that mean that I’m a failure in addition to feeling anxious? A sinner?

          Instead of beating myself like Dobby, the house-elf (a Harry Potter reference) I’ve decided to permit the emotion – under experimental control. No wallowing allowed, but more in line with “OK, I’m anxious. Let’s see what happens.” That, by itself, has taken some of the anxiety’s power away. That doesn’t surprise me. “Fat” stopped having power when I got to the point that I could admit I was fat. It regained power when I got thin and then started getting fat again because I didn’t want to face it.

          In the course of the day, I’ve moved from “I don’t know how I’m going to cope” to “I still don’t know how I’m going to cope, but I’m going to cope,” and “I can’t do anything about any of that for six more weeks.” That’s not quite true, but it is true enough to let me reach a couple conclusions.

          Here are a few of my conclusions about the causes of my anxiety:

1)    I don’t like feeling out of control, which tends to mean that I don’t like it when things don’t go the way I want them to.

2)    At least part of my anxiety is connected to HU!NY! Syndrome (Hurry up! Not Yet!) Even today’s verse is touched by that. God is not being my shield. He’s not being my very great reward. But the reality is that right now, I don’t need a shield or a very great reward. The danger from which I need to be shielded isn’t actually here, now.

3)    Getting busy with what is here and now, what does need to be addressed, helps. For example, we still have no water, but I finally found the place where I can fill a gallon bottle for $0.25 instead of buying new bottles for $0.99 and a friend gave me the idea of putting basins under the water spouts, to catch the runoff from the roof when it rains. It’s not something you’d want to drink, but it maintains the toilet. (Of course, it hasn’t rained since she educated me.) I’ve learned for future reference – which means that God is shielding me in advance!

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