At my Cape Cod Writers night out my author friend, Shirley Pieters Vogel shared an excerpt from her book “wHispers”. It was the beautiful story of how she and her wonderful husband Stefan met after she went through a very traumatic divorce from her first husband, Conn. The story is not only beautiful, it’s almost unbelievable. (I won’t tell you about it hoping you’ll seek out a copy of her book.). At the end of her reading she quoted the Bible verse inscribed inside their wedding rings. The last line of the verse resonated loudly in my head: “Lean not upon thine own understanding”.
This past year I have overcome one very difficult situation and now find myself in the midst another. In the last situation I actually let it, over the course of eight months, take away who I was, which in turn caused the present situation. I saved myself from going down the black hole of depression, emerged stronger than ever, and with a greater understanding of “how I work”. My present situation tried to take away my sense of myself as “a good person”, with good intentions and my integrity. So very soon after climbing out of the quagmire of last year, I once again found myself very close to stepping over the line. I had two choices. I could either curl up in chair and paralyze myself, berating myself for being a horrible person, or I could get up, take a shower, resume my life, and retain my sense of who I am and who I have been for 57 years. I got up, showered, went to my writers event and heard Shirley’s words. That last line resonated in my head over and over on the drive home. Why, I didn’t know.
The next day I was very close to believing I was less than a “good person”, when in a moment of very dark despair God plainly whispered:
“Lean NOT upon your OWN understanding …because YOU are just a tiny person, living on a tiny half acre of land on this huge earth, and YOU don’t understand anything. Now….read the REST of the damn verse!”
So I guess you could say, “The Lord has spoken”, or as my friend Shirley would say, “wHispered”. I spent 6 weeks thinking I understood and knew the hows and whys and whats that others were thinking and feeling. This only caused me to make bad decisions and make the situation worse, almost leading, once again, to my own personal demise. So I dug out my old college Bible, found the verse and read the rest. Sure enough. I knew nor understood nothing. It said:
“If you want favor with both God and man, and a reputation for good judgement and common sense, then trust the Lord completely; DON’T EVER TRUST YOURSELF. In everything you do, put God first, and He will direct you and crown your efforts with success.”
Well, right now, my efforts certainly need to be “crowned” with some success, so I’ll try anything. It’s easy to let a big struggle overtake your thinking thruout the day and subconsciously eat at you. Now, with my new mantra, every time my thoughts “go there” I just say “Stop! You don’t KNOW anything – lean NOT unto your own understanding!” It makes sense and above all, it works. It stops me in my tracks and keeps me from having those imaginary conversations and arguments in my head. I feel a certain peace in “not knowing”, and better yet, even more peace that somebody bigger than me can see and know the future and has it covered. I have often mentioned that the hardest thing to do, for me, such a “fixer”, is NOTHING. This is probably the first time I have ever found peace in “doing nothing”.
In the past year I’ve strayed a bit far from the faith that has sustained me for over forty years. On July 31,1971 as a lost, scared, shy college freshman I acknowledged a higher power as the master of my destiny. Everytime I lost focus of that, life got messy. I just hope God doesn’t get tired of chasing me around with a broom and a dustpan.
And so, as another day goes by, there’s no place to go but UP, and…I have written.
*blog for 2/18- editing and publishing held up due to travel and concert plans. 🙂
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