Almost

"Preacher or poet, who was it wrote
Give any one species too much rope
And they'll f--- it up"
- Roger Waters, Too Much Rope

Last week was a little rough. I spent half of it beating on myself in an effort to control illusions based on misguided perception. God spent the second half of it beating on me through friends, circumstances, and finally speaking directly to get his message across.

I almost missed my target because I aimed wrong. This year has been a year of adventure and following God into new scary places. This pursuit has often meant basing my actions on a "best guess" of God's leading, which requires very careful attention to any redirection along the way. I've risked appropriately but God narrowly saved me (again) from going "off the reservation".

I'd been following the path He laid, checking my heart and His will along the way...right up until I got enamored of the path rather than the Paver. I confused possibilities for promises. I stopped trusting and took up speculating.

I transposed risk for adventure, unusual/"different" for challenging. I almost substituted "catch me, God, because here I come" for knowing better, but stopped "this far away".

I watched my life start to fragment like Asteroids (the old arcade game). You know, how the big rock breaks into small rocks when you shoot it, but the small rocks average to the same direction/speed. I watched parts of my personality/life separate while my life maintained the same overall momentum. That's not acceptable. I had to pull the chunks back, close the cracks, and continue as an integral person. Integrity isn't usually a sticking point for me (I am who I am everywhere), so I was surprised to see the division lines form.

I started to doubt the beneficence of my path and even expressed such to God, but took my inwardly-derived resolution (ill-informed) as concurrence.

At last, even the words out of my face started rising up to smite me. Even I saw the stereotypical errors and broken patterns that I was using as rationalization. I started to argue with a friend's text message about what was important in life, but my thumbs realized just how wrong the words I intended to write were.

One of my friends gave me advice, then followed up with "but pray and don't stop until God answers you. Because I believe He'll answer immediately." I didn't believe that, as I had spent some significant time arguing, but I decided to pray anyway. I wasn't completely thrilled with the (immediate) answer, so I asked again and for the answer to be clearer and louder. Before long, I saw the mental image of my own heart - fingers in my ears sing-songing and saying "Can't hear you God, talk louder" with Him speaking more and more until every corner reverberated with the same words.

I almost slipped. I almost settled for something God wanted me to pass by. Like a car hitting a pothole and flipping, something almost dug into my life's road and sent me end over end. But I got my stuff straightened back out.

At church this weekend, Pastor Jim asked the men to pledge to be men of God, signing their names to a tangible page as a reminder. As a testament, the pages are to be hung in the sanctuary for all to see. Jim mentioned that maybe they should also hang Sharpies to strike out names of those who had fallen from the ideal...except for the complete heresy contained in that idea. With Flatirons as "the collection of misfit toys" and the church of "Me Too", every name would have to be struck until none were left. That's not the redeeming message of God at all. In fact, it's the opposite. A draft of Emily's book postulates that failure is a required part of life as the part of the cycle that brings us back to God - and so I "complete the motion when [I] stumble." (From those great prophets of pop culture. GIYF) My tree's kinda ugly too, but it reaches out to the sky and God just the same. Figuratively, I "should be" finding my name with Sharpie in hand, but that's not the way God works. As it is, I just found something else to work on.

Having realized I was on shaky ground, I turned my steps back to solid ground. God and I are on good terms and I understand the point of the completed exercise. How much rope does my life need and how much extra rope will I take in my self-confidence? How quick do I catch myself when things are slightly amiss and I've started to step away from God's best?

Only as much rope as God gives me. As little as I can. And quicker than the last time. These are the answers I'm trying to build into my life. I'm learning. Slowly but surely.