SHUT UP!

I have been learning recently, because of a handful of business interactions, that sometimes there is simply nothing I can do, personally, to make a situation go how I want it to go. These interactions have made me angry, and sometimes I let the person know exactly why I was angry and what they should do to fix it.

The thing was, in every one of these situations, when I expressed my anger and what I wanted the other person to do about the problem, it didn’t make it better. In fact, the problem remained, unfixed, and the relationship got worse.

It would have been one thing if it happened once, but 3 times?

As I have started to look at it more closely, I am coming to see/feel/sense that the angry things I am feeling and wanting to say are really pretty useless. It doesn’t mean that my opinion is useless, but that something else is going on than my opinion.

In the Lord's Prayer we pray "Thy will be done," and I am getting a first hand lesson in how different that is from "My will be done". The more I look at it, the more I see that sometimes my will is really dumb!

Honestly, sometimes when I am praying recently, the voice that comes to my thoughts is (in such a nice way, really) "Shut UP!" It's saying. "Just be QUIET for a second and let God be his amazing, soulful self, and quit saying all these same old things, always trying to get YOUR way." But really it just comes as a feeling that says, "Now is not your turn to talk".

Often when we talk of "humbling" experiences it means something bad happened, or we failed at something. But it feels so good to shut up and let God be good. Being humbled is the best. So peaceful.

Clamoring about to get my own will is like picking a scab. The wound never heals. But ceasing all that, and instead waiting, listening, working, praying - causes me to feel cared for, remembered, and let's the problem be taken care of – in the right way.

May we all find more of the peace of God's sweet will. 