Sunday, January 12, 2020

Joyous Dance, or Stop the Enabling and Get on with Life

On this joyous journey called life that I am living and moving and having my being, I am continually learning new things.  I have recently been shown that I am an enabler.  I do things for others that they can and should do for themselves.  I don't think that my motives are straight forward people pleasing.  There is a part of me that feels compelled to do for others, to help.  I feel guilty when I don't help.  I feel guilty asking things for myself.  I can always see the other person's side of things.  I put myself last so many times.

That is not to say that I am selfless. I can be very selfish at times.  I tend to hide my selfishness, to be embarrassed or ashamed of it.  I do my selfishness alone.  Recently God has been teaching me that I was put here to live the joyous life I was given.  I have flashes of that, moments of that joy.  I need to pay greater attention to those moments, to celebrate and recreate those moments.

Saturday morning I had to go to the lab for a fasting blood test.  Then on the opposite side of town (or over the river and through the woods) I had a short meeting that I only caught the last part of before going to breakfast. During breakfast I researched something I needed to buy.  They had 2 available at the Target that was not close to my house, so I went there across the bridge again and purchased the item.  When I went out to the Target parking lot it was only 10:30.  Now I didn't mention that the thing I really wanted to do that day was to go to the Art Museum to see an exhibit on Dutch Master painters that was soon closing.  I had decided that the blood test and meeting and purchasing were more important than my desire to view art.  I just didn't have time because I am old and slow and getting a lot of things done in a morning is not really something I am good at these days.

But, I felt an urge, a direction from the Holy Spirit if you will, to do it, go to the Art Museum since I had finished all that stuff before 10:30.  What was my excuse?  What was I waiting for?  So, I went to Forest Park, all the while telling myself that I probably wouldn't find parking or the exhibit would be sold out.  But I parked and got right in and really enjoyed the art.  I still had time left in the day and a bit of energy.  It was a gift.  Recently in prayer God has been calling me to relax, to do fun things. Not just big once a year trips, but fun, sometimes small, regular joyous celebrations of life.

And where you may be asking yourself is the connection between my being an enabler and this day when I accomplished so much and even had fun?  Until very recently I had been doing something for someone that they could do for themselves or they could share the load so to speak.  I got really upset about something else entirely and I saw that all this enabling was zapping me of time and energy.  When it came to the weekends I played catch up with everything in my life from laundry, to marketing, to paying bills, I was merely existing, not living.  So, I asked some persons in my life for changes, I threw the ball in someone else's court and felt horribly guilty.  But, as we put my request in place I found that I had time to breathe.  I had time to live a life, not to merely exist.  And a life is something I have been given by God.  It is not good and right for me to give up joy and happiness just to help someone do something that they can do for themselves.

There are lots of good things I do.  I will continue to do them.  There is a lot of stuff I need to keep my nose out of and not do.  But, most of all I need to remember to dance the dance with God, sometimes with wild abandon, and laugh and cry and shriek with joy.

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