day sixteen

surprised by transparency. it’s been a hard couple of weeks for me with a lot of rumblings in my mind and feelings of discontentment in several areas of my life. i know god is leading me, but that doesn’t always mean that i’m feeling chipper. one of the worries that i’ve been carrying around had to do with an upcoming review at work. it had been quite some time since my employers and i had formally arranged to sit down and talk about studio life. and i was a bit concerned with how they would receive the thoughts and comments that i had prepared to share. i wanted to be completely transparent but feared whether or not they would be willing (or able) to make the adjustments that i felt were needed to bring both life and passion back into my employment.

i was pleasantly surprised. as i met with them this morning, they encouraged me to be frank and honest about how i had been feeling and seemed to agree with everything that rolled off my tongue. they were incredibly receptive and i found it to be a huge blessing (and somewhat of a surprise). i can’t tell you how freeing it is to be transparent with people. i realize that it can be a huge risk, but i have found that even when transparency is not well received, it opens the door for personal reflection and some form of self-evaluation that most often leads to healing. there is something therapeutic about it.

i was also surprised by an idea today. as i was giving this experiment a bit of my think time, i had a thought. what if i were to follow-up this 30-day experiment with another 30-day experiment of my own – where the roles of the participants are reversed. now, you would need to take god’s omnipotence out of the equation, but roll with me on this one. what if i were to imagine god praying, “surprise me peripheral” each morning. what could i do that would surprise god? to let him know that i’m present? to let him know that i care about him? to let him know that i love him? etcetera. etcetera. how would my daily life change and what would i be doing to keep my relationship with him fresh?

now, i realize that there is nothing that i can do to make god love me any more than he already does. and that would not be the point. but i do wonder how my agenda would change. because instead of asking and waiting for god to respond to me, i would be more focused on serving him. i wonder how my time with him would change? how my intimacy with him would change? hmmm, interesting.