Memoir: I Scare Me

I’ll be blogging twice a week starting in November for Skirt magazine. I’m thrilled to be a part of their fantastic team.

I’ll link to my blogs so you can check them out. I’ll be talking about being real, pursuing your passion, doing what scares you, finding freedom from overbearing religious traditions, that sort of thing.

As my blogging grows, so does my commitment to be real and honest. When I see someone writing from their heart–the raw truth that they feel–I want to stand up and applaud. It is hard to be real. It is hard to step out and say to the world: I messed up here. I believed a lie here. I failed here.

This week I’ve also accepted a challenge by another blog to do one thing every day that scares me. Yesterday I realized that I scare me more than anything. I was taught for so many years that I could keep control over my life by following these certain steps, that if I got a, b, and c, I would get d:

If I gave up a college education to pursue character, I would succeed.
If I gave up dating to pursue purity, I would overcome.
If I gave up independence in order to submit, I would become wise.

I did succeed without ever going to college, not because of character, but because God blessed me.

I did overcome, but only because of grace.

As to the third thing, I don’t know when I will become wise, but I did submit . . . for a long time. That part didn’t hurt so much. What hurt was having to make decisions for myself afterward. It is still hard to make the call on certain things. I wasn’t trained for it. And I really believe that the only submitting that really matters now is to the God who holds my hand and walks with me through all this. If I’m submitting to He who gave everything for me, that’s all that matters.

And it leaves me plenty of room to screw up. This is what I fear. I no longer can lean on what I’ve earned from my good behavior or rely on an authority to tell me yes or no. I can’t blame anyone for anything I am doing to self-sabotage myself. It’s on me.

I stand alone. But not really alone. By letting go of all the “principles” and the “rules” that I clung to so desperately for so long, I now stand on a very firm rock. But I can climb down from that rock, I can jump off at any time, and I can gaze longingly over at another prime piece of rock real estate (ignoring the fact that it’s on sand that isn’t too stable).

And that scares me. I scare me. My goal in November is to deal with it. Ignore me and push past to do what I need to do.

Wish me luck.

Tagged as: overcoming resistance, Skirt.com, writing