Avoidance is my MO

Sometimes I think I'd have a better handle on my life if I just stopped avoiding things.  It takes a lot of thought and energy to avoid things, and that's thought and energy I could be putting into addressing the whatever-it-is and then moving on to something actually productive.

Along those lines, I've been thinking about making a list of all the things I'm avoiding.  Like pen and paper list.  It seems like a good first step to dealing with something - actually admitting that there is a something and that I'm avoiding it.  Acknowledge it.  Get it out in the open.

Would you be surprised to learn I'm avoiding making that list?

That sorta reminds me:

The other day, my therapist told me that he thinks my transformation by God is more "Jacob wrestling with God" and less "road to Damascus."

So I'll try not to let myself get beat down that I am not the me I want to be quite yet.

Come to think of it, maybe that's why my hip has been popping so much lately, to remind me that struggling is succeeding and only quitting is losing.

Why does it have to be this way?


So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."

But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."

The man asked him, "What is your name?"

"Jacob," he answered.

Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."

Jacob said, "Please tell me your name."

But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there.

So Jacob called the place Peniel,saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared."

Dear God,

I think you'll be happy to know that I am changing my mind about you. Hopefully to truer things.

I think I've stopped believing that I don't deserve to come to you in petition just because I don't pray often enough. And I don't praise you enough. And I don't thank you enough.

I think I've stopped believing that whatever you will do you will do, no matter if I ask for it. And I think I've stopped believing that you always do what is best for me, and that therefore with any request I may make, your only answer is knowing silence. Not that you don't do what is best for me, but that's the only way I can make out prayer being useful or effective. Surely the point of prayer isn't only learning reliance on you. Right?

I think I have stopped believing in hedging my bets. As in, please completely heal this situation. And if you don't do that, then please make it not so bad. And if you don't do that, please help me deal with it better. And if you don't do that, then thank you for getting me through it anyway.

I want to be bold. I want to say, "God, give me this. The end."

Which is strange, since I don't believe you will grant my request. But I ask it anyway. But I don't know why.