Gaining Perspective on... Gaining Perspective

I've had some interesting conversations of late that remind me that God brings clients to my office as much to work on them as to work on me. Yes, folks, you read that right. You think when you go see a counselor that you're the only one learning? Think again. My conversations with many of my colleagues indicate otherwise; we seem to be faced with clients whose pain, experiences, and struggles mirror our own. It's a humbling process because it causes me, as the "professional", to make sure I'm in a good place to be offering counsel and wisdom. If I'm speaking out of both sides of my mouth - in other words, if I'm giving you advice that I'm not taking myself - it doesn't sit right internally, and I have some processing to do of my own when I get home.

That said, today was an especially strong reminder of what I've just spelled out for you. Those of you who know me well know that I struggle with questioning myself. That's actually putting it mildly. I have, in recent months, come to better understand what I do as analyzing all my analysis, or said another way, asking existential questions. "Why do I feel what I feel? Why do I believe that? How do I know that I think that?" (Emphasis added to help illustrate just how deep I try to dig in order to get my questions answered.)

Let me tell you - this is exhausting! I ask many, many existential questions, and once I arrive at an answer, I breathe a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, asking "why" or "how" makes my answer contingent on evidence, so anytime more evidence is gathered, I have to start the process all over again.

I have had the privilege - and the pain, because it's a special kind of hard to encounter someone who does to themselves the most exhausting thing you do to yourself - of counseling women who do this. Today, the Spirit equipped me with some illustrations to help draw this out even more. There are two sides to those of us who do this - analyze our analyses -; one part is the one doing the action or having the thought. Then there's the other part that sort of oversees the thinking or the doing, all the while checking motives, asking questions, gathering evidence to confirm or deny that the thinking or doing is being thought or done the right way, for the right reasons, with a right attitude....

The most painful part of this process is that we, the analysis analyzers, desperately want to do and think and act in ways that are honest, holy, and glorify God (well, if you're not a Christian, you might say you want to do and think and act in ways that are moral). Thus, our motives are pure (though, as a non-Christian, I have to disagree with you that your actions are moral; what makes them moral is that they are in line with the word of God... but I digress).

Yet we worry that, because we want our motives to be pure, we only want them to be pure because of some perceived benefit to ourselves, something we're "getting out of it". I don't know if you can fathom the heartache this brings if you aren't an analysis analyzer, but it's so, so discouraging. I want to rest from all my questions, but then I start to wonder why I want to rest. Aren't I committed to working through this issue? Aren't I willing to take whatever trial the Lord puts before me as I recognize it is for my good and for His glory? (Again, emphasis added to show just how unforgiving I can be toward myself.)

Thus, the questions begin again, this time with a determination to not let myself run from them. With a steeled will, I force myself to question myself. You know how, on Law & Order, they often include story lines where the suspect has been interrogated for 12, 18, 24 hours straight? Well, in my head, I'm the interrogator, and my thoughts are, quite literally, suspect.

I don't trust them because I believe them to be inherently untrustworthy. And I can justify this behavior Biblically since Scripture says that no one is righteous; no, not one. That means MY thoughts are just as sinful and unrighteous as anyone else's. So since Scripture supports the practice of questioning and looking at the heart, I make myself do it all the more. I try to gain perspective on what my current attitude - or perspective - is. But guess what? You can always gain perspective on your perspective of your perspective.

Yup, it's exhausting.

You might hear the whispers of the enemy loud and clear in this thinking; if so, I envy you! I wish I could so easily decipher his lies so I can spit them out before swallowing them. Instead, they sound true and feel true, so I entertain them. I dance with them. But soon the dance is so fast and so beyond my skill level that I'm spinning so fast that I'm drilling a hole into the floor.

So the Lord was doing double duty today - working on me and working on the other person - when I found myself saying that asking why is like taking medicine. It can be healthy for you, but too much of it can be poison. Asking why is healthy. Asking why too much is not. The motives and feelings are pure. I do want to honor the Lord, to reflect His grace, to speak His Truth, and to proclaim His name. Asking "why" is what makes those motives seem false.

My compulsion to know with the deepest degree of certainty that I can have forces me to question deeply, and questioning deeply means not settling for any answer. I must know that the answer is true - I bold that word to show how sure I must be of that knowledge. But, after all, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" Jeremiah 17:9. Knowing to the degree that I demand myself to know these things is impossible.

But trusting isn't.

I can trust that my questions are rooted in a desire to take my faith seriously, and that desire does, indeed, honor the Lord. And the compulsion to ask those questions so unforgivingly of myself does not honor Him - not because it is sin (it might be, but I'm choosing not to indulge that question right now :)), but because asking questions so unforgivingly does not allow me to live in freedom.

So today, I'm gaining perspective on just that: gaining perspective. I can relax. After hearing just a small part of my mind today, can you understand how FREEING that knowledge is? I do not need to keep asking questions. I can trust that the Father knows this persnickety, fearful, cautious, skeptical heart of mine. I want to want what He wants me to want, and when I struggle against the fears that whisper that I want what He wants because of some personal benefit rather than out of the right reason - loving Him - I can remember that God is the author of all knowledge and all Truth. He knows my motives, and I can trust that He does not have to analyze them endlessly to know them to be glorifying to Him. So what is my perspective gained on gaining perspective?

I can stop.

I can be still.

I can trust Him to know me better than I know myself.

I can believe Him to love me with such fervor and relentlessness that my own energy expended to interrogate myself doesn't just pale, but becomes invisible, in comparison.

I can turn myself over to trust rather than forcing myself to know.

I can surrender to a love that frees rather than a mind that lies.

So that's my new perspective. Help me remember not to question it or analyze it, won't you? :)