Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest – June 27 entry

“I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord.” Jeremiah 1:8

God promised Jeremiah that He would deliver him personally. That is all God promises His children. Wherever God sends us, He will guard our lives. Our personal property and possessions are a matter of indifference, we have to sit loosely to all those things; if we do not, there will be panic and heartbreak and distress. That is the inwardness of the overshadowing of personal deliverance.

“Our personal property and possessions…we have to sit loosely to all those things; if we do not, there will be panic and heartbreak and distress.” This caused me to think – and remember the following from Brennan Manning in Ragamuffin:

The garbage in most of our lives is the relentless anxiety and agitation created by the fear that we will not get enough of the world’s goodies to feel safe, secure and turned on.

It was a feeling that I was holding on too tightly and fretting too much over “things” that started me thinking about making changes on From the Front Porch (see On Eagles Wings post or page). My motives for adding advertising, for advertising on other blogs, for commenting on other blogs – were not entirely or even primarily, motives of greed. It costs money to self-host. Cameras, accessories, software – big bucks. As the number of people reading From the Front Porch grew and I discovered that my comments elsewhere led people to find me – AND – as I realized how much I loved the writing and photography, I wondered if I could subsidize this new love. I enjoyed the sense of community among bloggers. I see nothing wrong in making a living from writing and photography on a blog. It is self-publishing – a wonderful form of entrepreneurship.

My personal discontent with what I was doing stems not from the vehicle or the original motivation but the sense of anxiety I grew to have over the “numbers” for the day – how many comments, how many pageviews… And I started to pay attention to which entries seemed to get the most attention and maybe I should do more like that. And I started to not like doing it and longing for the mornings when I wrote for me.

My “day” job – my programming work – it is going well. I enjoy that work very much and feel extremely grateful that I have been able to make a good living doing something I enjoy – from a home office. And in this day of wi-fi, aircards, i.e. internet virtually everywhere, I can work from anywhere.

These thoughts, anxiety over money, over the house, over the future – fueled by this thought that if I wrote well enough, if my photography was good enough, it would “save” me from future fluctuations in programming work, or enable me to write and shoot full time. Suddenly I realized I was living in a way that I dislike – living with the feeling that I could control the future. Worse, I was not enjoying “now” as I tried to maintain control.

On June 27, I read the Oswald Chambers entry and finally “leaned not on my own understanding”. I have always had “enough”… It took a few days to loosen the hold. But, once I let go, enormous peace… It is a good path for me, this loose hold on things. It is when I do my best work – programming, writing or photography. It is when I am the best “me”. “Let go in reckless confidence” – another Brennan Manning theme – one I have written on the top of the spreadsheet I use for tracking my time for my programming work – something for me to remember every day.

On this Fourth of July, this day of Independence for our country, I will also celebrate an independence from fretting about the future and simply enjoy today.

“This is the day the Lord hath made. Rejoice and be glad in it” Psalm 118:24