Anxitys and shells

when i look at my family's level of anxity i'm amazed that i can fuction as well as i can. i never understood how my mom held down a job, i guess the line of work she was in it was a benifit to check into every worry. my brother has so much anxity that he's compleatly agoraphobic and has never been able to hold a job for long. so me... i have this shell... and i resort to this shell when life gets too scarry. and God wants me to stop resorting to the shell and lean on him. that means pressing through the fear, just like pressing through the pain to find the healing. which is different from the "have to be tough to survive" this is the "choice to be tough for the sake of alowing God to strech me" and tough is't really the word for it because it's depending on God's strangth, not my own. the only difference between the two is the deeper motive. if i'm doing something i'm scared to do then that is being streched, but if i'm doing something because i'm scared of the alternative then i'm being tough. ofcourse the line get a little fuzzy when i add that i'm scared to stay in my shell because i would rather die then to have to keep living in this fear all the time, so i hand the plans over to God of how to get me out of it, and i follow as best as i know how as He instructs me. and when things don't go as smooth as i would like should i follow the temptations to go hide back in my shell? i can't handle that bondage much longer. buissness as usual is over opens doors that would not normaly be open in church settings, but i also relize i have to have mercy on those who are not ready to take that bull fully by the horns. when love is put before buisness the church looks compleatly different, and it's offensive to those who are used to buissnes as a substitue for leaning on God for every step and decision. they got stuck on what things "should" look like. how a pastor should look and how the church should look and how the service should be planned and the systamatic way that God should be studied and the say we should pray. and it's not just the church, it's society because if a kid dosn't act they way they should in school they get put on a pill. and that excludes more than 50% of society that can't fit into the "norm" and leaves them hurt and broken. God calls us all to go out and bind up the wounds of the broken hearted, but most churches refuse to be accosiated with "those" people. but if everyone took an honest humble look at themselves they would see that they are no different than "those" people. then they can start to drop their fake status quo acts and start being real, then that opens their hearts for God to make some real changes in them instead of just being pew warmers and going through the motions. and a change like that is rarly slow and suddle, it's a toss caution to the wind and jump off the cliff into God's arms not just waiting till life pushes us off the cliff and we try to hang on for dear life... it's realizing that we are standing on the cliff of our own strangth and running and jumping off. it's trusting that God can see us through any difficult scarry thing. once we jump off the cliff, thats when we can mount up on wings like eagles, run and not grow werry... when we let go of the need to do it all ourselves and surrender our life and will over to God. so the answer to if it's being tough or if it's being streched is more simply surrender. funny how it still keeps comming back to that word that seems to have started this all. and it's the word that works for "these" people and for "those" people alike. because those used to church looking a certain way need to surender to God changing things and that's just as hard as these people getting used to alowing God to manage their life and not lean on the own strangth and understanding, and really the these and the those are doing the exact same thing yet still see eachother on opposite sides of the fense. there are many things that bind all humans togther with the whole earth of other humans, having feelings is one of them, because even the coldest of person has feelings, they just shut them off because the pain of holding on to them was too much to handle, so some of the hardest criminals were actully the most sensitive of heart at the start, the trick is getting people to look deeper than their protective tough outter shell. we could come up with a whole list of things that bind all humans togther... like the need for love, surrender, the need for God. being real and open about the needs of humans is what will bring them in with hungry eyes looking for that freedom to stop pretending. that freedom is only in Jesus who's name can break every chain.
this is the type of stuff i post on facebook all the time, i'm gaining a following of people who read my every post, even when i post 10 status updates a day. people eat this stuff up, atleast those who are sick and tired of being sick and tired and are desperate and hungry for something more. the gates will open and the people will flood in when they see that this is what is being offered. i don't know if i will ever be able to alow God to streach me enough to be able to speak these things like this, but for now it seems no one is ready to hear it in the church anyway. maybe that's why we are being called out to the highways and byways... maybe we can't wait for church people to get it, that the needs of the lost and dieing are too urgent to wait for "typical christians" to get involved. maybe they will not catch on untill they see that it will work to win the hearts of the people. and i know this isn't just me and my "theology" of sorts, because i am hearing it and seeing it pop up everywhere in little peices. the church people may forever scolff at the idea of giving a susan boyle looking person a chance because they have forgoten that God dosn't look at the surface, He looks at the heart. it seems the world is quicker to give the odd balls a chance than the church is, so the church is so backwards from the heart of God. they read into the scricptures to prove their own agaendas rather then alow God and His nature to inturperate what it really means. the church is more blind and in bondage that they realize because even if it is presented in a perfectly make sense way, they still will not understand. they lack the wisdom knowladge and understanding to be able to see God's character outside their box. i see these things so clearly at times yet i can never seem to put them in words, and when i do the people who listen are too confused blinded and bound to ever understand. so i may be fighting a hopeless war, but if i had let the hopelessness stop me i would never have made it this far. i can do all things through christ who gives me strangth. and that strangth includes the courage to come out of my shell... and even if people want to shove me back in that shell, i need to keep comming out and taking a stand because that is what God has set for me to do, and i know my life, my health, my everything that keeps getting better in my life is because i keep pursuing what God wants for me and not my own comfort. i'm sold out yet still being held down by those who are not ready yet. yet if i don't practice now i will not be ready to launch when the time is right. and it's not about me taking a stage, because i would love to see others do so, expessialy if God can do it better through someone else, i'm humble like that, i'm also scared like that. so for me to speak up is surrender for me. and it seems the more not ready i feel the more God pushes me forward , so i'm more ready when i'm not ready... and i know i will get things wrong and screw stuff up but we learn by experance, the more we fail the more we learn, the more the mistakes the more we have oportunity to grow. i like someone's reply to my facebook posts one day.... they said that God never wastes a single tear or hurt, only people waste such things, and they waste them by wallowing in them and not using them as a medium for change. tears arw like the water in the pool, floating objects are so much eaiser to move than things on dry land... how do you move a mountain? put it in a pool of tears and let the water or spirit do the work.
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Whenever we try to skip a step we end up having to come back and repeat it. the short cut is just an illusion that keeps us thinking we are moving forward while we are still just traped. Running from the pain only numbs the feelings, both the good and the bad. it takes more courage to face it than to avoid it. there is no perfect time to start. it's important to remeber that it dosn't have to be perfect the first time, sometimes we have to just try to get the momentum moving, theres time to perfect the process later. if we are to live in the truth and the light in life changing ways then every word of the bible tends to get reframed in the mind from when it was read from the tough it up and judgmental mindset. we can always read something and twist it to fix what we want. in high school our english teacher had us read a poem and we each had to write about it's meaning. we all had differnt answers on what it ment. then he pulled out what the author intended it to mean and that was compleatly differnt from what the author had later wrote to explain it. with this in mind we can understand why there is so much false doctrine, intense theologies and fighting beweeen churches. everyone holds tight to what it means to them but never see God outside of the box of their own understanding. without the holy spirit it is impossible to see beyond our own perpectives. then there is the fear of change and that carries some pride of not wanting to admit we could ever be wrong. we all try to self comfort our life's because we havn't learned how to fully rely on God and eachother. then there's the people who never try to self-comfort, they can only begg others for comfort. usally because of lack of good role models of how to handle pain. theres gota be a balance somewhere there. that's a fuzzy area still. bearing with oneanother is hard, expessialy when our own pain is crying from deep inside and begging for the healing touch. then we build resentments toward those who do ask for help. i don't know what the end product of all this work will look like, i don't want to try to put it into a mold before God molds it in His way. it just will not be right like that. i tried to fit into molds my mom had of me with being rebecca of sunny brook farm... and i nievely accepted my mothers mold of my father instead of getting a chance to know who he was for myself. i'm well practiced in trying to make things look right on the outside while everything inside is out of place. it will always be a temptation to skip the steps and make it all look good, expessialy when societys pressures to buck up to be more acceptable and fun to be around. then messages about not being self centered and self seeking get scewed into pretending away the pains. pain that can't go away with distracting the mind needs to be taken to the great physisian. some pains will work themselves out with just a little time, love and a hug, some need to be talked through with someone to process it. and someone not used to processing it will need a lot of extra time on that step till they learn some skills to do it themselves. i don't think anyone truly enjoys being a burden on others, maybe there are a few weirdos out there. i'm glad the bible says to bear with oneanother eachothers burdens, but so many people have been stuffing for so long they can't help with someone elses burdens because their own are too much to bear. God's yoke is easy and He is the sorce of rest and strangth while walking this long dark hard roads. whenever it feels like to much we just cry out to Him. we are never alone in our pain like that because He is always near. surrender and cry out is all that it takes to access that spirit place of rest and strangth. There is no perfect time to start. there may only be moments to let small peices out for a little while, but that gets the momentum going. hopeing for a moment when the schedual is clear for a langth of time then expecting that we can just sit down and start the process that we have been holding off on... it dosnt work that easy... that's a buisness aproch to emotions, and emotions will not conform to the molds we often wish they would. the longer it's held on to the harder it is to get it to come out when the oportunity arises. holding on for another day makes it hurt more in the long run. doing one thing a day to let a little bit out becomes very important. time dosn't heal many types of wounds, and those type will get worse when ignored then when they do come out it's a lot more ugly and dramatic than organally required. so think about 1 thing a day minimum. what can ya do today. what one thing can you write about it or draw a picture about or make a song about. we have to make the time. even if it's a 15 min. break. when i first started dealing with stuff i would keep something with me, usally my blankie, but it can be a small object of any choicing. and whenever i had that object in my had was "ok" time to process a little. then when it was time to get back to work and life the object would be put away. my blanki helped alot, it absorbed the tear