Stop Fighting Your Life

As I sit here, almost a month after my baptism into the Catholic Church, some new clarity has dawned.

My entire reason for coming to Christianity was that I was good and tired of trying to run my own life. I’d had enough of flagrant self-control. And while I had had deep and abiding experiences with Surrender, I would always return to playing God in my own life.

We all do this.

300 years of a growing secular society has reinforced our autonomy. Individualism, self-control, self-help, with a dollup of ‘I, and I alone, am the driver of my life,’ has all driven home a kind of modern humanism that revolts against any authority outside of the almighty SELF.

This is also the entire epitaph of Original Sin. While the original conception of humans was to walk with God, in perfect, unashamed harmony, we choose another way. The temptation of ‘I’ll do it my way,’ to quote Frank Sinatra, was just too juicy for us to turn down.

Like any good cult, the messaging has appealed consistently and repeatedly to our very identity. Who are you? It asks with genuine curiosity. And as therapeutic society has replaced religious society, the central answer always comes back to…I am who I feel that I am.

But who I ‘feel’ that I am changes. All the time. It changes with age, it changes with experience, it changes with loss, it changes through relationship, it changes through forgiveness. Who I ‘feel’ that I am is not a static quality. Not only that, but the widespread psychological undertaking of ourSELVES has not produced the healing and peace it promised.

This psychological model of the isolated spiritual being has not actually delivered us from our existential angst. Social science paints an entirely different picture of our happiness, peace and belonging.

We’ve never been at a lower ebb.

People are lonelier, more isolated and anxious than we’ve ever been.

So something doesn’t add up with our long-winded attempt at ‘doing it our way.’

We also, at some point, have to figure out what we’re trying to do by ‘doing it our way.’ What is the goal here? We never stop to think about this, we just soldier on, trying, doing and trying some more.

What is it, at bottom, that we’re trying to accomplish through ‘our way?’ You might think of some specific examples from your own life. Like, trying to heal something, forgive something, gain something, appease someone, feel better inside, amp up our importance…and perhaps all of those have relevancy in your life.

But there is something deeper within you that is in pursuit. We can put ten different labels on what we’re aiming for, but there is something more foundational underneath all of the specifics that is propelling all other motivations.

The problem is, we think we are our motivations. When I attempt to heal my own body, which is my central struggle, I convince myself that I know what I need to do, how to do it, and then I try to will my way through it…the whole thing is exhausting.

But when I look at my relationship with this body of mine - or any autoimmune body, for that matter - the central conundrum is a withdrawl of love. It is an isolation of self. It is a case of mistaken identity…literally.

The autoimmune body mistakes its own, healthy tissue for an invader…a foreigner. And it seeks to attack it.

It’s really, at its core, an identity issue. It’s an ongoing fight with the Self.

When I’ve tried to commandeer this body, it doesn’t work. Cue the fight.

When the anxious person tries anxiously to snuff out their anxiety…when the perfectionist tries to perfect her own perfectionistic tendencies…when the person with body image issues doubles down on herself and her eating habits…you get the idea.

It’s the dog chasing its tail all over again; convinced that, surely, one day he will catch it.

No matter what your issue is or what you perceive it to be, we are all only looking for one thing: Unconditional Love.

And not human unconditional love. We’re too screwed up to offer this on any consistent basis to each other. Let’s just admit it.

We long to go Home; to rest in God. Why? Because that is where unconditional love lives. That is the Source of what we’re actually looking for.

This is what has so radically changed my own life. Entering into a relationship with Christ has completely wiped away all previous conceptions, efforts and perceptions. What I thought I needed to do in order to heal (healing MY way…being the driver) has completely turned inside out.

It hasn’t been rational. It’s all happening on its terms and in its time. One of the first things that I noticed as someone who has walked with illness almost my entire life is that I’ve never been very good at receiving. That message came in loud and clear on the evening of my baptism.

Sitting in the pews with my family and one of my dearest friends (and sponsor), I was presented with an overwhelming invitation.

Let Me help you…He said.

The lifeline that availed itself to me that evening was not about what I could achieve, but rather, what I could receive.

Love. Help. A better way.

A dam broke that evening and it is changing the course of my life. What I thought I had to do to heal has been turned on its head. The willpower that I thought I had needed to make big and sweeping changes in my life (to effect healing) has largely left my sphere.

A gentleness has entered my life. Things have slowed down. I’ve seen how just the very act of trying to heal myself and do everything on my own has been, in and of itself, an exhausting and defeating practice.

Just ask my adrenals.

The act of relaxing into and not fighting this body…this life…has been the elixir. What I thought I needed to ‘do’ on the outside, as it turns out, hasn’t been nearly as prescient as what I have needed to receive from Him.

I’m reminded everyday that something bigger than me, something that has loved me without condition, from the very beginning, has got this. I’m being held.

I can’t stress enough to you how much this, alone, is working to heal an inner foundation that I’ve largely ignored.

Healing for me was never going to happen through my ‘efforts.’ Diet, lifestyle practices, movement…while all fine and perhaps even needed…were never going to be the salve without the relational foundation as the primary change-maker.

That is what propels each and every one of us at the deepest level.

And you might wonder…if we were to arrive at the foundation, might all the specifics take care of themselves? Might the healing, the forgiving and the atoning happen on their own, if the foundation of life was met first?

Perhaps. More than likely.

This is why the never-ending micro-managing of our lives is so futile. We’re fighting the wrong fight.

Like the dog that chases its own tail and expects to one day catch it, we find ourselves chasing the wrong thing.

Matthew 6:33 states: "But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."

What this means is that when we seek God first, everything else is downstream of that. All of our material and spiritual needs are met from that foundation. In fact, when we seek out God first, we can be sure that everything that flows from that relationship is in perfect order.

Saint Augustine repeatedly wrote about “tranquillitas ordinis," which translates to the tranquility of order. Or to put it more succinctly:

Peace follows from right order.

That longing that sits in your heart is looking for this right order. It’s not looking to heal something specific or to mend a particular relationship or to improve your material world. Only the perceived separate self barks out these individual orders, believing that if each of these little pieces of your life are mended, than all will be well.

Not true.

This is the lie of Original Sin…of living apart from God.

To live in this isolation is to literally break ourselves up into little parts. It is a disjointed and disordered way to live.

Each little part, fighting for its existence…treading water, just trying to keep from going under.

It’s no way to live and yet we call this freedom! Anything else is an infringement on our individuality.

The truth is, we are relational beings. We’re not individuals at all.

We’re relational beings desperately looking to fill the God shaped hole in our lives with everything but God.

So…how do we course correct? We’ve got to start somewhere.

If there is a right order of things (and there is) we could start by not fighting our lives anymore. We could begin by settling into how are lives are currently ordered. And of course, they’re a mess. All of our lives are a mess.

Admitting that is such a relief.

But there’s something of even deeper relief: We don’t actually know how to fix them.

Ahhhh…the truth always feels so good admit.

Even that first bit of honest self-revelation creates some inner peace.

Peace follows from right order.

Okay…so now what?

We leave ‘what is’ alone. We leave it be. It is not up to us.

If right order is to enter our lives, we have to admit that we’re not the ones to curate that right order. God is.

Now the mind is a tricky little trickster who will want to know how to ‘proposition’ God to get Him to create the ‘right order’ within us.

It’s almost comical.

The control we think we need to exert here is next level. It slips in through the backdoor without notice. And yet any true healing or redemption is found in relinquishing this control.

Yet, God knows how many hairs you have on your head. He knows every single thought in your mind, how many cells are in your body and what it is that you’re stewing over…in every single moment of the day.

He knows you because He made you. He’s got this.

All that is being asked of you is to turn back around towards Him.

That’s it.

Turn your gaze upwards…inwards. Prayer is the bridge. Not to petition anything specific. God already knows your laundry list; believe me.

The deepest longing is for Communion; love.

This is the highest order of the human being.

God wants you back.

You want God back.

Stop fighting your life.

All anxiety, all illness, all depression, all obsessing, all paranoia, all unworthiness, all confusion, all trauma….is the Soul devoid of God. It is the Soul in pain.

You are not anxious, your are heart sick; homesick. You’re not unworthy, you’re just untethered from unconditional love.

This is your call to come Home.