Infinite Inertia

I have come to the point of liberation. I ask simply for a quota free life. 

Every single aspect of my life is measured and weighed in some way. Every decision I make is held up in comparison against my past choices and every choice others have made in my place. I live in the shadow of people I’ve never met, people I care nothing for, people no longer living on this earth. How can I be so abundantly chained?

I am rigid under the restraints of number and time and, above all, expectation. 

People—everyone—asserts that expectations are healthy and standards are essential, but somehow, I find them bleeding and creeping through my skin until the very breaths I breathe are measured and scarce. 

I want success, but the road to it is measured in a distance I cannot cross. I want joy, but it requires far too much of me. I want fellowship, but the quota of friends keeps growing without a single one making any mark on my soul. I gorge myself on these things I require, exerting all my energy to obtain some filler feeling, to emulate some genuine emotion I see in someone else. 

I am but one friend away from that sort of companionship, yes? I am but one book away from that sort of calling, yes? I am but four years short of that sort of accomplishment or a dozen dates short of that kind of relationship. 

I can’t fall short if I stop running. 

What would the world do if I stopped. If I halted my unyielding marathon, and let it keep spinning recklessly out into chaos around me. What if I shut my eyes, and simply listened as the whole world came unhinged?

What if, instead of mourning my past continuously, I simply accepted it as the well-conceived craftsmanship of an Almighty God? What if I stopped bewailing my complete inadequacies and settled down to glory in them? What if I stopped chasing rainbows and stopped to admire them? 

This world, even in its softest whispers, demands greatness of me. Satan would either condemn me or inspire me—cast me down or set me up to fall. But, I am tired of sacrificing myself on the altar of greatness, of accomplishment, of acceptance. 

I think, if I’m completely honest, I would rather be alone than trapped inside a hoard of people I haphazardly collected. I would rather be content than ravished. Let them have the scoreboard. Let them measure up. Let them be social and smart, gifted and influential. 

I would be happy simply to rest. 

God goes by so many names: High Tower, Hiding Place, Most High. He calls us to all these places: His shadow, His pavilion, His secret, and the safety of His wings. Places that require nothing of us, places that we must abandon if we wish to run. 

God is our Shepherd, and so He makes us lie down in green pastures. He, in calling us out of this world, calls us out of its pace. We are to carry the inertia of infinity out in this everyday life—this ideal that all things worth having are gifts from above. 

So I will wait. I will rest. I will give up all my expectations in the stead of petitioning dreams. I will be quiet and still so that I might see the miraculous troubling of the water. I will not rush to splash in, knowing Jesus will come in His time. 

I do not know where I am going. But, I know where I am and Who is with me. I do not know what the day will require of me, but I know Who has put the world in my heart. 

The easiest way to escape the spiral is to stop moving. 

Today, I release my exhausted muscles and let everything go. 

Today, I stop.