I am taking up blogging to see if this can be an outlet for some of the stress I'm dealing with now, being a full time student, planning my wedding for May and dealing with friendships and spiritual growth. I haven't done one of these since high school and that really wasn't more than a teenage angst rant.
At the moment I am starting work for my March modular class: Contemporary Counselling Issues. It sounds a little scary but should be a good class. I just read the first chapter of one of the textbooks and an article by Larry Crabb. The book is Who You Are and the article is "Facing the Pain Inside". The combination was a very interesting read.
The reading made me reflect on how we view ourselves and our relationships. Even within a half hour of reading it I found myself using these reflections in ordiary conversation. Especially about the way that we naturally try to look out for ourselves, putting our protection and preservation as a priority. This doesn't seem bad at first glance but Crabb fleshes it our in such a way that makes you go "ouch". We tend to use God as someone to make us feel better about ourselves, His forgiveness gives us self-worth and His power to heal us and give us back enjoyment of our sense of self.
But that causes a problem. We are told to trust God but we doubt that "God is good enough to be fully trusted....Trusting a God who tells us He loves us but then fails to protect us from the hard circumstances of life doesn't come easily." (Crabb 1997) God doesn't always take us out of our painful selves and situations, so why should we trust Him?
But the concept is that the Christian life is not about being comfortable, in fact it is quite the opposite. When we give us trying to protect ourselves and let God do it we can do what we are called to do. We are called to trust God; obeying Him by "giving up that style of relating to people that really has our own comfort and protection in view." (Crabb 1987)
Crabb sums it up elegantly: "So the hurt doesn't end. But trusting Christ with our pain and obeying Him by loving others leads to a deep sense of wholeness, a deep sense of intactness. There is life in Christ, and we begin to experience the reality of that life when we do what He says, when we give up our futile efforts at self-protection and allow Him to change us from the inside out." (Crabb 1987)
What am I holding back in? Where am I striving hard for self-protection? It is hard to accept the hurt, but the good out ways it, I think. What do I get from protecting myself but walls and separation from people I care about?
Now to write two academic pages on the content of these readings.
