I just can’t move off of II Tim 1:7. (Regular readers probably have memorized this verse along with me.)
“God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but one of power, love, and self-discipline.”
I get love and self-discipline, but I waffle on power. Today I came upon a thought provoking statement about power.
“Originally, the word power meant “able to be”. In time, it was contracted to mean “to be able”. We suffer the difference.” ~ Nepo
I suffer the difference. When considering “able to be”, I take it as whatever I have inside of me that I can use to be the best I can be, to help however and wherever I can. I used to wear a goddess necklace that was engraved on the back with:
“Live your life and forget your age.” Norman Vincent Peale
That little quote, with the necklace jingling around my neck to remind me of it, gave me inner power to not succumb to the “aging” thing. That was over two years ago. Recently I came across it and put a new piece of black cord on it and slipped it over my head. Once again I’m infused with the energy to try new things at almost 60 and keep moving. Ten of the fourteen pounds I set out to tackle in the fall are gone. My book is in the rewriting stage. Yoga is five days a week. A forty minute exercise program in the late afternoon is in place. I’m doing pencil drawing and water color. I belong to a blog group, a book club, and Cape Cod Writers. I’d say over two years I got a lot of mileage out of this little goddess.
That inner power is all well and good, but what did I learn about the worldly power? The “to be able” one that controls people and things? Well, at the end of the passage Nepo always presents a few meditative questions and today I sat and answered them. Thinking back on every time in my life I felt I needed to resort to this type of power, change the places and names, but the answers were always the same.
1. Sit quietly and recall a situation in which you exerted control.
– I thought of many…..
2. What did having a sense of control do for you?
– It gave me security from loss
3. What did having a sense of control require of you?
– It required me to run around in circles and become obsessed with maintaining it.
4. How much of your control was necessary?
– None. I had all I ever wanted without even trying – just relaxing being myself would have been enough, but I never saw it until it was too late.
5. What would have happened if you had let others join you on your hill of control?
– The need to control would’ve disappeared and security would’ve prevailed with peace, and the outer power would’ve been converted to inner power by sharing and connecting.
I have one more question to add:
6. What happened when you tried to do it all yourself?
– I lost the things I was trying so hard to hold onto. (Ironically, a Dr. Philism)
Obviously I learned worldly control is never a good thing. This outer control, the power “to be able”, is the control God wants us to surrender to Him. Let Him sit on the hill with us. Let Him provide the security. Let Him stop our crazy running around to try to hold onto that which we are afraid of losing.
Surrendering the worldly power “to be able” to God, leaves us open for Him to infuse us with inner power so we are “able to be” the best we can be for whatever He has planned for our lives in this world.
And so, as another day goes by, the goddess is resurrected, inner power is the focus, and ….I have written.
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