Several years ago I wrote and posted on my website a contemplation entitled God’s Call wherein I acknowledged that I was called by God to write and had committed myself to that call. In 2012-2013 I posted about 70 Contemplations and abruptly stopped posting anything. I didn’t stop writing altogether, but I reached the place where I believed that I had to spend my time and energy walking out what I had already written before I could legitimately post anything else.
Now, three years later, I have again felt that call
to write and have renewed my commitment to that call. In the interim, I have felt myself to be in the school of the Spirit
where God has been rooting up
many plants (false beliefs) that He had not planted:
Matthew 15:13 But he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.
The most recent (and most deeply rooted) has been the hold that the law has continued to have on me because of the concept of God as judge and condemner that I had not entirely let go. Last night (in the early morning hours, rather), as I was wrestling with thoughts of what I should and should not do about this and that (thoughts that were keeping me awake), I finally got quiet enough inside to hear God say to me, If you would just start writing, you wouldn’t be wrestling with all these
shoulds
and coulds.
I immediately got out my computer and wrote the contemplation Elohim or Yahweh? (very applicable, don’t you think?), finishing about 3:30 AM.
I’ve spent the past 9 years living in my home state (from which I moved at age 20) close to my siblings, Three of them have passed into the next dimension, and the other three are ailing. Because I am quite a good cook and not a bad caretaker, I have spent a great deal of my time and energy feeling responsible for meeting their needs in these areas. Actually, I allowed them to become quite dependent upon me.
Last fall (as I have recounted in the contemplation Listening from Within) my husband and I made the decision to return to the place where we spent 32 years of our lives together and where I attended school five years before that—the place where our life-long friends still live and where we both feel very much at home.
We knew within ourselves that we were following God’s direction, but one sibling in particular didn’t see it that way. She felt I should remain where I was, adopt her friends as mine, and just enjoy whatever years we were granted beyond our threescore and ten
—enjoy those years together.
What she failed to understand was that there is no enjoyment of one’s life lived outside the will of God. I knew this myself, but still it was difficult for me to leave her.
I had already nursed her through several operations and knew that she would probably be having another one in my absence. That was a part of what has been keeping me awake nights since I’ve left my siblings. What is my responsibility in regard to them?
In those nights of sleeplessness I’ve consistently heard, Stand still and see the salvation of God.
I knew that I was very CAPABLE of spending the rest of my life caring for these siblings, but I also knew that was not what God was CALLING me to do.
I have already seen God’s salvation. Two of my siblings visited me this summer, saw that I had a life
here with lots of friends (whom they, too, knew from past visits) that I didn’t have in their town, saw that I was very happy here and rejoiced in my happiness. Today I received the call from my sister that she is indeed having a hip surgery in September but is releasing me from any responsibility for being her caretaker. All that fretting for nothing!
I want to emphasize that this problem is entirely within myself, not outside. It is I, not my siblings, who have believed that I ought
to be doing what I’m capable of doing very well. Through much tribulation
I have learned that capability does not constitute calling
and have written this contemplation because I know for a certainty that I’m not the only conscientious Christian who has had this struggle. It is very common to those of us who have been raised with a concept of God (the Law God
) who is always demanding more than we can possibly give and condemning us for our failure, those of us still struggling with those shoulds
and coulds.
All of us must stop asking the wrong question, What CAN or SHOULD I Do?
and begin asking the only question that matters, What is God
which is most often answered by another question, calling
or instructing me to do?What do I WANT to do or FEEL to do?
Until we can act on the answer to that last question, we are still under the law
and have not yet experienced the glorious liberty of the children of God
Romans 8:21.