Save Me From Myself

I am currently sitting in my new house. Last week, I moved out of my parents' house and into a house in Multnomah Village with five other girls, one dog, and one cat. It's a bungalow-type house, with a creatively foliaged back yard and a front yard lined with multi-colored rose bushes. The floor in the kitchen looks like a huge checker board, and the house overall has a Portlandy charm to it. I'm sitting in the front entryway/living room and have just completed cleaning most of the downstairs. I've been rather frustrated this week because on Sunday, I got a minor concussion wake-boarding and was ordered by my doctor to stay idle. My plan was to spend this week looking for a job, but have instead been confined to staying inside and going on small, slow walks. So this morning, I was going crazy and had to do something productive. The five other girls are all working, so I determined myself to clean the house. And so I have. 

Now, like I said, I am sitting in the sun-lit entryway/living room, listening to the hum of the washer downstairs (the basement) and the soothing snore of Rimky, the pug, and have just finished browsing over a friend's blog. His blog is one that I greatly enjoy reading, and he said something interesting that got me thinking a lot about my life:

"Maturity can't mean tolerating feelings you don't want."

Hmm. It seems that I've been tolerating a lot lately--a lot of unwanted feelings and emotions and unneeded worries and insecurities. I seem to convince myself regularly that my inability to change for the better is some kind of maturity, that instead of admitting to self-pity and pride, I pompously brush them aside and instead forget about them for a while. Like my friend said in his blog, "Maybe maturity looks very differently than what we're perceiving it to be. Maybe what we've interpreted as 'maturity' actually is nothing more than incarceration; resignation...retirement." Maybe my inability to care about ridding myself of these bad qualities is not the maturity I keep convincing myself that I have, but instead, a weakness in myself that I'm afraid to face.

Habits are a strange thing, and being rid of them alone can be quite hard. But why do I think I'm alone in all this? Why do I tell myself that there is no hope, when in reality, I have the living God who is ever presently by my side? Why do I stay in this place of desolation and hurt when I have the promise of salvation, now and in eternity, being spoken over me? I don't know why, and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of thinking that I can somehow beat this fickle thing called sin all by myself. I'm tired of believing that I have the strength to fight through it...because I have only found myself with the option to fall on my knees and say out loud that He is the only one who can change my own heart. I think I know myself, but He knows me better. I think I know what I need, but He created me. I think I can do it all alone, but His fatherly character is waiting with open arms as I stumble and fall.

As Jon Foreman so honestly puts it, "Oh Lord, save me from myself."