Hamster Wheel

I've been chasing after clarity.  Mulling over frustrations in my life, my former job, my head.  Thinking and rethinking and rethinking.  Driving myself crazy with it.  Trying to understand, to pinpoint, to capsulize.  Getting nowhere.  

This has continued relentlessly for quite some time now.  Months.  

Running on a hamster wheel.  Frantically.  To the point of exhaustion.  Yet finding it immensely difficult to stop.  

There's a certain comfort in the hamster wheel, a familiarity that, though wearing, is also energizing.  On the hamster wheel, the fuel of inner confusion, anger and frustration keep me going with boundless spiraling compulsion.  

There's a predictability to the hamster wheel too.  I may not understand the situation.  I may be revisiting the facts and the emotions with little genuine insight.  But I know the wheel.  

In the absence of true clarity, I lock fiercely on each nugget of fact and emotion.  I see each of them clearly, albeit briefly, like rungs on a hamster wheel.  They speed by.  But for a moment, a fleeting moment, I can see something clearly and then something else and something else.  In the absence of true clarity, I've been willing to settle.

The morning after I first came to this realization, my mother-in-law, who had no idea what I'd been thinking, sent me an email with the link below.  (Be sure to watch to the end.) 

Sheesh!

I'm discovering (through the help of a spiritual director who meets with me periodically) God is not in the hamster wheel.  It's not that he's not with me or accessible to me there.  But I will not experience him in the hamster wheel.  In fact, I will not even experience him in clarity.  Sure, he sometimes offers me moments of true clarity, but that is not where I need to look to find him.  

I am made not for clarity, but for relationship with the Creator.  Clarity is nice, but it alone will never be truly satisfying.  Chasing after clarity only expends energy and fuels frustration.  It does not bring me closer to what I truly and deeply desire.

I'm trying to learn how to step off the hamster wheel.  It is not easy, but boy oh boy do have lots of opportunity to practice these days.  


Yesterday, I read the following excerpt from Rechurch: Healing Your Way Back to the People of God by Stephen Mansfield:
 

"You have been replaying the facts of your situation over and over again in your mind.  You want to talk about the facts as you see them, and then you want to set those facts afire and shove them into the faces of those who wronged you.  But hear me on this: there may be a time and a place for the facts to be aired, but getting the facts right will never set you free.  Even if everyone involved in your hurtful situation instantly agreed with your perspective on the facts, it would not heal the damage that has been done to your insides.  So, excuse me while I sidestep the facts -- your version and theirs -- and simply show you the path to wholeness.  Then, may God do with the facts of your painful situation whatever he pleases." (p. 17)

It's true, but... OUCH!

And yet, I find the most consolation and feel the most wholeness and freedom in stepping back from my pursuit of clarity, vindication and self-defense, and stepping into the arms of God, as best I can.

Zephaniah 3:17
The LORD you God is with you,
He is mighty to save
He will take great delight in you.
He will quiet you with his love.
He will rejoice over you with singing.