The Pride Behind My Chaos

Maybe peace felt unfamiliar because chaos felt productive.

I never realized that the idea of being used to a constant state of urgency  could become an addiction. The idea that if everything wasn’t in shambles, or somewhat, if not entirely bringing me stress then I wasn’t okay or better said, that I wasn’t “doing enough.” It was as if I thought that in order to feel like I was doing something right, I needed to be exhausting myself or bringing myself to my wits end. 

I came to realize this when I had to stop and think about how I was constantly choosing hard. Like yes, sometimes I find that my life is more complicated than average, and to some degree I understand that in the inevitable “attacks” sense of the word, but as a daughter of The living King, I needed to understand my place. I needed to understand that while trials and tribulations would come this was not to say that I needed to constantly decide the harder route. In my deep emotional dives, I found that this was the pre-disposed thought that I needed to choose the “hard” route because somebody’s got to, right?? And if not me then who?? It came from a place of me thinking that I needed to take care of everyone. 

I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting in this current chapter of life; evaluating who I am,  who I want to become but more importantly, who I’m called to become. This has been my favorite and most challenging chapter of reflection, my friend. My favorite because in a lot of ways things are beginning to make sense, my dreams that were once simply a thought are becoming my reality, and things I doubted are becoming clear. I’m finding my people, and I am confident in what it is that I’m chasing. Challenging because this has caused me to become very honest with myself. The good, bad, and ugly. The ugly parts of my character, my attitude, and choices, all of it. And on that same token, God has also been teaching me a little something about surrender and submission. Surrendering my plan for His, and submitting to the Spirit. In this chapter of my life, I had to make a few big decisions . Decisions that ultimately came down to the simple question of I can either choose to humble myself and submit, or I can choose to just do the hard thing, suffer for a little bit, but surely it will straighten itself out. 

I came to the end of myself in deciding that my nervous system genuinely needed a break. I needed a break from my chaos, I needed a break from trying to do everything myself. 

I want to acknowledge that you may be reading this and say “well some of us don’t have a choice” and I agree, I also believe that there will always be times where you just have to do the dang thing and I am in no way taking away from that. What I am underlining here was a level of cockiness that I had to come down from. It wasn’t simply about not wanting to choose hard. It was a lesson of surrendering my own pride. 

See, my addiction to chaos was rooted in pride. Pride in the way I felt I needed to be “that girl” I needed to be the one who just figured it out. I needed to be the one that got the fabulous reputation. I believe that I had to come to the end of myself so that God could teach me that if I wanted to dive deeper into him, I needed to be less consumed with myself.

This is still something I am navigating in real time, and honestly I think will always be something that I am refining and learning from, but I will say that when I decided to swallow my pride, surrender and take the seemingly “simpler” route, I saw and am still seeing the Lord’s hand move. Although I still have moments of wondering what it is that I’m doing, I rest assured that the Lord’s hand is on me, and He is guiding me through that. 

After all, if you want the Lord’s hand in something, make sure yours aren’t in the way.