the perfect present

the perfect present

i am so thrilled that others of you are finding as much hope as i have in the words 'you control the door'.

i find that when i am able to recover control of the proper items in my life my thirst to control everything else is sated a bit.

i used to think that control meant that i got to eat everything i wanted to - no one was gonna tell me i couldn't. that was so backwards. i was being controlled and couldn't even see it. realizing that a balanced view of my eating habits required me to say no to certain foods recovered that control that i was originally looking for, and put things in proper perspective.

it was very empowering.

that is how i feel with this new information. empowered. i can name the fear, shut the door on the rest, bring it into the light, deal rationally with it and lay it to rest. light puts things in their proper perspective. darkness creates shadows that make things seem larger than they actually are. the light focuses on each fear and reduces it to it's real size. reality and fear aren't very good friends. living in reality is a much healthier place for me than dwelling in the maybe's and could be's, the what if's and whether or not's.

reality asks what is the issue i am afraid of? is it the fear of rejection? okay, let's examine it: rejected by whom? for what? what will the consequenses really be if this is true? is it true? do i have any control in this issue that i'm not taking? do i really care as much as i think i do if i am truly rejected by these people i'm fearing? can i surround myself with people who won't reject me to offset the other's possible rejection therefore building my confidence back and probably forgoing the possible rejection from happening in reality?

this is the thought process that i am following. i think each of these questions (and more) bring my fear into the light and help me gain freedom from that fear. it also usually turns that fear into a straw man and i am able to set it aside as powerless, or deal with it in it's proper perspective if it truly turns out to be real.

one of the best tools i have been given is to take each thought to it's full end course. i do this with temptation naturally now as i have trained myself to fully see the end of acting out on something that tempts me to throw away my abstinence or moral commitment. doing this with my fear is just as helpful. remembering that i am not six anymore, that i know how to dial 911, that i'm a larger woman who can put up a pretty good fight especially if her children are in danger (mama bear), etc. allows me to say 'even if someone, god forbid, does sneak into my home and i am not able to keep them out, i am not a weak, helpless victim.'

seeing each fear to it's final possible end makes me realize how silly some of those fears truly are. no, silly is the wrong word, because none of our fears actually ever feel silly. they are tangible and real. a better word would be baseless. how baseless they truly are.

i remember when pink and buck were very young we went to visit my sister. she was single and somehow terrified that my two children would place their fingers in her fans. she insisted instead that we sit in the heat and humidity of fanless existence. it really controller her. i couldn't take it any more and turned them back on. every time they neared a fan she would caution them, 'ah, no, ah, stay away from the fan...' i looked at her in my exhausted mom state and said 'they'll only do it once'... she gasped in horror at my casual attitude. how could i be so cruel? so uncaring?

never in their whole childhood did my children ever put their fingers near a fan. i could have chosen to be frantic for the past 8 years about something that never happened, but i chose not to be. if that was a lesson they needed to learn the hard way, well, then i guess that's what needed to happen.

i tell you this story to illustrate a point i make to my children when they voice fears about things out of our control. they remember how freaked out aunt 'd' got back then. and i remind them that they each have every one of their fingers and they never chose to place any of them near the fan blades (not because of her cautions, but because they knew that would be stupid). i forget myself sometimes that fear over things that haven't happened is probably fear over things that probably will never happen. i can waste my time concerned about what if's or frozen by maybe's. instead of enjoying the now, the present. this time that we are gifted from god. fear steals that away from us. it causes us to live in the past or the future, instead of right now.

what a gift. the perfect present. perfect love casts out fear. being present in the present is truly were we can experience and feel that love, express that love that casts out our fears. thank you father for this perfect present.