The World's Best Security System

1. Where do you tend to look for security? What gives you your inner sense of well-being?


Tripp makes this set of questions easy for me. He's got me pegged. He lists a bunch of typical places people seek security (relationships, careers, and the like), and then says this:
"Or maybe you have no security system at all. Maybe your days are a cycle of concern, fear, and dread. Perhaps you hyper-analyze every decision you make, and you brutalize yourself with doubt after you make them. Perhaps you look with regret at past decisions. Perhaps you give yourself way too much credit for the development of your story."

That about covers me, don't you think? Where do I tend to look for security? For many years, I looked to myself. It had been pretty clearly established inside my head that I couldn't count on others – others betray, others abandon, others die – but I made a plan for my life and seemed to be doing pretty well at pulling it off. I saw my need for predictability, for control, but intentionally picked a life path that would make that nearly impossible to attain: a life with no job stability, because it also meant a life with no consistent relationships. If I needed a break, I could fall off the radar and come back at my convenience. I could reinvent myself with every tour.

But then I failed me, and I didn't know where to look. So I started to self-destruct. Yes, I looked to God, repeatedly but never consistently. It was too hard to keep eye contact. And I continued to slide down. The Cryders broke my fall, and inevitably I started looking to them to some extent for my security as well.

I'm not sure I remember what an inner sense of well-being feels like. I still don't really feel Christ, or the Holy Spirit, or whatever, in me, although sometimes I feel Him near me. I still mostly feel lost, although my seeking has become more persistent. Usually, the silence is deafening.


2. What are the things that you need to say to yourself when life seems unpredictable and/or dangerous?


"You are not secure because you have control or understanding." Once again, Tripp says it for me. Because those are the two things I want: control and understanding. We usually think of understanding as a good thing, but it keeps tripping me up in my walk with God, because I confuse understanding with faith. I get tangled up in trying to comprehend it all instead of starting where Jesus says to start: "Repent and believe." All the understanding in the world isn't going to save me. It's only by God's grace that I have any hope.

My need for control... it seems practically hard-wired into my personality, and I don't know how to fix it.  Let's be honest: I can't fix it. So what do I do with it? Offer it up to God, repent of it, and give control to Him. That sounds right, but in practical application, no matter how many times I try to set it down before Him, I always seem to snatch it right back up again. It makes my brain hurt. It makes my heart hurt. Trapped in this box of an apartment on the second consecutive day of rain, I feel trapped not only by my geography but by my circumstances. I do overanalyze every decision I've made, brutalize myself over my mistakes, wonder how this can possibly be God's plan and not something else I screwed up. How else could I have landed here? And how can I fix it? And we're back at the start.

So now I have to go confess again, repent again, offer this life that I don't understand and can't control up to God again, knowing that I'm going to fail. It all makes me feel tired, and trapped. Don't get me wrong – this is a good day, a good week, but answering these questions brings out the ugly truth, that I remain trapped inside myself, feeling like I'm slowly disappearing; that I still haven't found this freedom that Jesus promises to those who follow him. I just have to believe that when I fail (again and again!), God does and will forgive. Again. And again.