Today is Love’s last day working for the company he’s given the majority of his waking hours, energy, and creativity to for the last four years and eight months. We’ve been talking quite a bit about how it’s time to pursue other opportunities, but the news that his position was being eliminated still hit us like cold water.

I’m not the worrying kind. I have no reason to doubt that God will continue to care for us. It’s not hard for me to consider “worst case scenario” — losing the house, having no money for food, etc. — and conclude that none of that is worrisome. I’ve spent a night at a stranger’s house for lack of shelter. I’ve worn clothes that others threw away. I’ve survived on discarded food from my fast food job. It’s not a lifestyle I aspire to, but I know how to be poor. I know where to find food banks and perfectly good clothing for free. I know how to save water and electricity and gas. I know how to prepare meals that cost next to nothing and keep a growing tummy full.

But the fact that I revert back to this trusting in my abilities is just exactly what is wrong with me. I give a nod to God, but deep down what reassures me isn’t that He has provided for me every step of the way — it’s that I have been able to endure hard times in the past. I feel like if God takes everything away, I still have my own can-do attitude and willpower to strive and struggle and “get back on the horse”.

This is probably why God has allowed me to continue to struggle with the lack of motivation, general “blurry” feelings, and despair that go along with depression. I have to thank Him that He keeps my strong drive checked in some way, because if I were allowed to be as “type A” as I feel when I’m not stricken with the hopelessness that wakes me up and puts me to bed sometimes for months at a time, I don’t think I would give Him any glory at all. I would be content to toss Him a perfunctory “thanks” and move on with relying on my own strength.

At the beginning of this year, I chose to dwell specifically on the word “refuge”, and to make a deliberate attempt to understand what it means to make God my refuge. I can’t say that I’ve been as steady as I intended to be at pursuing that knowledge. Still, the little that I’ve put my mind to it, God has blessed in His typical abundant fashion. I do pray more than I did last year. I’ve learned since January that if I can trace my sin back to where I demanded my way and, instead request, I grow in humility and holiness. I have not done this perfectly; I haven’t even done it well. But I am learning that when I feel that anger, that despair, that hopelessness rise up in my heart to turn around and ask myself, “What am I demanding? What do you want, soul?” And I am learning that getting in touch with what I really desire is — oh the irony of ironies — the path to contentment.

I grew up thinking like the Buddha: the path to contentment is the removal of desire. We suffer because we want. There is truth in that, but like a shadow it lacks all the greatness of the greater reality (substance). We were created for the purpose of desiring. We were created to want. The problem is that instead of wanting what we were created to want, we set our sights on other things — and that’s where the suffering comes from. The Buddha was right that we suffer because we want, but he never found out why.

So much of taking refuge in God is acknowledging the desires that fuel my thoughts, feelings, and actions. Rather than dismissing my own feelings as “wrong”, I delve into them. I’m feeling like staying in bed all day would be some sort of solution to all my sadness. Why? What do I really want? I want comfort. How many days have I spent trying to reject my desire for comfort, only to have it leak out in my food choices and where I choose to spend my time and how I choose to relate to people? The bed represents guilt-free comfort that asks nothing of anybody. That’s why I want to stay in bed. But God made me to be needy; He created me to give and take in relationships with others. Not only is it impractical to stay in bed all morning, it doesn’t actually meet my need.

I don’t worry, but I do wake up feeling like the world would be a better place if it didn’t have to endure my moroseness, and if I have to be alive I will just do my best not to infect anyone. Isn’t that just the strangest thing, to be so certain that I can’t change my mood that it doesn’t even occur to me that the most obvious solution to being morose is to address that feeling so I no longer feel morose?

And all this comes down to Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He will make your paths straight

I desire most of anything to be in charge of myself, to be autonomous. But I am not. I was created by God, formed by God, and I am even now being sustained by God. I get no glory for choosing Him, because He first chose me. It is not up to me to choose God’s ways because they seem right and good to me; it is up to me to trust and not lean on my own understanding. How difficult this is for the analytical person!!

But this I know, when God is my refuge I will not be shaken. When God is my refuge, nothing can keep me in bed for I will jump at the chance to meet with Him in the early morning hours. When God is my refuge, I am full of joy and my life is abundant. And all I need to do is be willing to let Him be this for me. Taking up my cross, laying down my agenda, and following Him.