Forced Free Will

There have been a few times in my life when I've felt like God was making it impossible for me to be able to do anything, except what he wants me to do.  This is one of those times.

I've been really sick for the past week or so while I've been hunting for jobs, networking and planning and researching what I will do next in my professional career.  First a cold, which was bad, but manageable.  Then came pink eye, or eyes, which was far less manageable.  Then came a solid 12 hours of construction in my building which might as well have been in my own living room.  It was so loud I couldn't hear anything but the drilling.  

These external arguably minor challenges mirrored the frustrations I have been feeling and thinking for far longer than this week--about the world, God and myself.  

I've discovered over the past two years who I really am, not who I think I am or want to be.  But who I really am.  A lot of that has to do with really honest people around me telling me what is--people I respect and can't ignore.  

This process has been hard.  So hard that it has made me question what I thought I believed. Unfortunately, or fortunately, this has resulted in a great deal of anger towards God.  

"Why the heck did he create the world like this?

I'd arrive at unsatisfying answers every time. I'd try to talk to God about these questions, but found myself getting more and more angry, and farther away from him.  Until this week.  

This week I've found that my feelings of need are stronger than my questions.  That my anger, while still there, is more quiet than the loud and unavoidable evidence of anger that is all around me.  

And so I am forced to freely choose to believe.  To believe that God is the answer to my need and to believe that He welcomes my questions.  Sure, I've always known this.  But today I feel it.

Back on the external front, I've also surrendered.  Fine, I'm sick.  So I'll stop and rest.  I am forced to lay down and sleep, read or just stare.    I am forced to stop the hunt and rest, knowing that God has a surprise for me in my next steps, a surprise that will still come whether I send out my resume this week or not.  

Why forced?  While I can choose whatever "solution" I want, I still know that Jesus is the answer - no matter how angry at him I might be.  So, I am forced to freely rest and heal.  I am forced to freely go to God with my angry questions.  

Here is a great quote I just found...

"The symptoms and the illness are not the same thing.  The illness exists long before the symptoms.  Rather than being the illness, the symptoms are the beginning of its cures.  The fact that they are unwanted makes them all the more a phenomenon of grace--a gift of God, a message from the unconscious, if you will, to initiate self-examination and repair." - M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled