Shutting Off The Video Game

   

      I always loved the video game Tetris. The colorful shapes and the energetic music coaxed me to play. I wasn't a die-hard gamer, but I spent countless summer days trying to master it anyway. There was something so alluring about the idea that with five more minutes I could score higher and advance farther. If I just had five more minutes. Well, that five minutes turned into ten, twenty, until I finally realized I wasted more time than I had planned to, and I didn't have anything to show for it.

     My thoughts can be compared to a game of Tetris. I want them all to line up and give me peace. I could then move on to bigger and better things in life, but sometimes they pile up in the wrong way. In the pile up I tend to believe I can't get past this moment, and I begin to shut down. As I try to move the negative thought another pile up occurs and pretty soon the game is over.

    How many friendships have I walked away from through the years, because I thought for sure we couldn’t work out our differences? With my own mouth, I convinced myself that I wasn’t worth the reconciliation. So many times I have walked alone, sat alone, ate alone because I believed I didn’t really have anything to offer. But I guess I don’t want to waste time anymore in the seat of negativity focusing on the pile-up. As Joyce Meyer says, “Quit that stinkin’ thinkin’!”

  

    I have quit a lot of things in my life, but could I really quit thinking and speaking negative things over myself? I wasn’t sure, I was used to pile-ups in these areas. Some thoughts are so deeply embedded in my identity I am not even sure how they got there. Like the colorful blocks falling into place in the game of Tetris, this way of life seemed to fit me. It seemed to be natural to me.

    In bible college, I became keenly aware of the negative outlook I had of myself. When I felt negative around others I quickly censored myself. Ugly thoughts or depressed feelings weren’t allowed, after all, I was studying to be a minister. Too bad suppression doesn’t really get rid of the problem, it just masks it. After I got married I nearly had a nervous breakdown before our first anniversary because I couldn’t figure out what I should do with the fears, and pressures I felt as a married person.

     Luckily I found a counselor that listened to me ramble on. I didn’t even know why I sat in the chair across from her desk. Shouldn’t I just be able to think happy thoughts and get over this? The problem was not the feelings it was everything behind the feelings that shook me up.

      I graduated from college, relieved to move on. Certainly a new place, a new assignment would make things different. But wherever I went, she followed, that ugly dark part of me. When we moved to Iowa I thought that having children would take the gloomy thoughts away, but I just found more anger stirring, as I not only tried to take care of me but now the needs of little children.

     We moved again, and I thought surely the old me will have to stay in Waterloo. I couldn’t possibly let people see her now. I am a mom, and a minister I need to look the part. For a time I maintained appearances, but as my list of expectations for myself grew larger than my ability to succeed I had to face her again. Soon the words began to tumble out like blocks falling to be ordered to the entrancing music of the game.

Worthless

          Not enough

      Pathetic

                                   Ugly

Stupid

     But one day I yelled, "enough is enough! I don’t have to speak this way over myself anymore. I need a new vocabulary. I need a new definition for who I am."

I finally realized hiding behind what I think I should be is not freedom. The pressures of pretense and the real challenges of life had collided. The pile up had reached my ceiling. It was time to find the real Dianne, I knew she had to still exist somewhere in there. Through a series of hard moments, the fake exterior started to crumble into true confessions.

I am a struggling mom, I don’t have all the answers and I don’t like reading parenting books

(Yikes I said it!)

I only make three meals well: tacos, chili, and meatloaf (sometimes). 

I love to read the bible in the morning, but I am not a morning person, so please don’t talk to me until 10AM.

I can’t play sports, watch sports, or even understand sports.

I struggle with shyness and I wish I could be more outgoing.

     Such confessions are really trivial, I know, in the scheme of life.  But these little beginnings are cracking open a new world of honest living before God and man. Hiding is my way of control, but owning up is my surrender. It is time to shut off the video game and get on with living this amazing life God has intended for me.