Anxiety

I am an anxious person. I remember when a good friend mentioned she had panic attacks and I was so surprised, because she is one of the calmest people I know. Thus, even as I write, I believe I come across as the opposite of anxious. I tend to put so much pressure on the outcome (a great time, helping, getting more tasks done) that it is hard to enjoy, to play.

The outcome I engineer is that of a good reputation, being useful, available, worthy. The trick is that it is impossible to live up to my own standards.

I recently had someone tell me to change my style of gardening. The command to do what he wants leaves me stuck either making him happy and me angry or me happy and him miserable. His happiness is in my hands. It crippled me. 

My friend described something similar with a host family she lives with, where she can't eat what she wants to, without making them upset and the alternative she often chooses is eating what she thinks they want her to so they are in control and she is not. 

There is a temporary paralysis that happens when we live under someone else's house rules or attempt to respond to their emotional needs for control. But what do we do? For my friend it is to eat yucky food and pretend gratefulness or reject their food and in so doing, judge them, be judged by them as an outsider and ultimately fall out of relationship (High stakes?). 

Still, when looking from outside the situation, it seems obvious I should serve my own interests first, except that when that backfires and/or butts heads, I fall further into a hole of wanting to avoid both my interests and others.

I have circled back on The Artist Way for the third time this year, and now in weeks 9 and 10 have really connected with this notion of creative blocks and creative U-turns. With U-turns, you lose your ability to forge ahead and the idea is that this is normal! I can try, or try again, fail, or fail again, then comfort myself by eating a homemade donut before I step back into the situation and try again. I am me, I am God's creative force in the world, I don't have to be "god" and work to make another happy, nor do I have to let another "human" become "king," assuming they have the answers and I must give up my will to follow theirs.  

It takes me to the line Jesus prays to God, "Thy will be done." That is my freedom prayer as I look at the conflict inside this page, inside my chest when I try to manage my number of "likes" in any given moment. God's will is above pleasing and appeasing everyone (God's will for others is bigger then my doing what they think they need me to). It gets to the congruence of a higher calling that somehow (though I don't often see how) incorporates all sides and allows me to breath and play and love and serve.

Thy will. . .