RDM #1 – Wild at Mind

So this is my first post in the exciting new series called Rainy Day Mondays. If you need to be reminded what this is all about… then you have the memory of a slug, since I only started it like yesterday. In which case, click on the link and learn more about it.

Our first post is one I did in February in this very blog called Wild at Mind. Enjoy…

WILD AT MIND

Last week I was watching a DVD with my cell group. We were watching the first episode in the Louis Giglio series entitled Lost in Translation. Which, by the way, I can highly recommend.

And while we are watching, I start thinking. I start thinking about what he is saying, and how to apply it to my life. I also start thinking about what questions I can ask the group about what we are hearing. At the same time, I am thinking about the phone call I got at work today, and what I need to do about it tomorrow, and I am also figuring out how to amend the ingredients in a carrot cake to be sugar-free, drawing up a shopping list, making mental notes about the training day I have to plan for later this month, calculating the cubic root of 1331 the long way (don't even ask) and doing scores of other things. And this is all while watching LOUIS GIGLIO, who I like. Can you imagine what would be going through my head if I was watching Pastor J John?

Okay, don't answer that.

The point, and yes I do have one, is that I have a pretty wild mind. But I don't think I am alone in this. (Except perhaps for the cubic root thing. That's just weird!) We all have hundreds of things going through our heads.

Have you ever had the experience of praying, and suddenly another thought comes to you? You get distracted by something you have to do later, or just thinking about something inconsequential. And how does that make you feel?

I can tell you how it makes me feel. Like a failure. Like I am failing GOD because I can't focus only on him. Like I should be able to just shut off my mind and listen to him in silence.

Is that how it makes you feel?

But is that right?

Of course I would love to be able to do that. To just stop thinking, and focus on nothing but GOD. To have a one-track mind. But here's the thing... I don't. GOD didn't make me that way. He didn't give me a one-track mind. He gave me a train-station in my head. Where Louis Giglio DVDs and Cake recipes cross paths at breakneck speed, and where my bible reading for this morning has to run side by side with Finding Nemo and an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Where Winnie the Pooh quotes get hitched up to memories of conversations I had three weeks ago.

In short, its a pretty wild place in my head. And that's the way GOD made it. The sort of place where I can take heavy bible lessons, and break them down by comparing them to a Pixar Animations film. The sort of place where I can listen completely to your question, and run through every book I have ever read on the subject, while at the same time praying to GOD to bring the right one to mind, and put all the information together. In short, the mind that makes me who I am today. The mind that I think GOD gave me to use for HIS glory.

And he knows it. I don't know for sure, but I think that when I am busy hitting my head against the wall, screaming "I am so sorry GOD, I don't know what is wrong with me today." He is saying, "Sharkbait, are you saying I made you wrong? Do you mean that you want me to give you a one-track mind?"

Heaven forbid!!!

In the DVD, entitled "Born to be wild" Louis suggests that the reason we suffer such frustration and stress in our lives is because we try to fit GOD into our own story for our life, instead of trying to fit ourselves into His story.

I want to take that a step further. I think that what GOD wants in our quiet time, is not that we would try and bring him to our problems, but rather that we would bring our problems to him. That we would make him present in every aspect, be it the DVD, or the carrot-cake recipe. That we would make him Lord of everything, not just the cool and holy stuff. That I wouldn't try and clean up a nice empty head so that we can sit in silence together, but that I would say, "Come in GOD, this is what I did today, and this is what I am going to do tomorrow. Please be with me, and let me feel your hand in mine as I go through this."

Or something like that.