Self induced stress…

While in Shanghai for a short assignment, I thought I could get some time to be away in nature, to be quiet and have communion with God.

Well, I did get away and it was a beautiful place – Moganshan – 4 hours away from Shanghai up about 2000 metres above sea level. It was cold and thankfully it was not yet the peak season.

But the effort to want to be quiet became such a obsession, the determination to have the quiet time all came to nought.

In reality, I was ‘worked up’ trying to get to that quiet place – really defeats my intent in the 1st place.

I have come to realise what it means ‘I am anxious because I do not get what I want…’ ‘I do not get what I want because I do not ask the Father for it’ and ‘If I ask the Father for it, I ask with a selfish motive…

In short, it is God who will establish the works of my hands, who establishes my life.

I need to just rest in my Father who loves me and wants me to relax and enjoy what He has given to me.

If only I realise how much I rob myself and how silly the entire picture is.

This brings me to another realisation. God in his abundant mercy allowed me to experience something which is not a norm for me. Typically, I am not a ‘I want’ type of personality.

In the last 2 months, I had been entertaining thoughts, subtle ones, without restraint. It is only with hindsight now, that it dawned on me that without the restraint, the quiet ‘I want’ voice had been in my mind for a long time.

With the lure of that ‘I want’ attitude, I began to unknowingly covet and strive. I put my body through the stress of the ‘I want’, my head constantly thinking of the item / situation, my muscles tense, the bio-chemicals within my body began to mess up and I became just a ball of nerves, and irrationality sets in. The tension was so bad, I got knots in my neck, shoulders, and arms. I allowed myself to get all bothered.

I then began to wonder about the two year old whose vocabulary swings between ‘I want’ and “I don’t want’. When the ‘I want’ tantrum begins, the little one has the same behavioural patterns as described above:

• tense muscles
• obsessed with the object of desire
• bio-chemicals mess up
• major drama

All my ugly behaviours traced back to the ‘I want’ mindset.