Abiding
A few months after I realized my vocation for ministry, I decided to go back to the therapist I’d been seeing when I was in depression. Mostly because I knew that I had to change my relationship with conflict (i.e. my extreme discomfort that leads me to do anything possible to avoid it as well as the fact that I seem to freeze, to go dumb, in the face of it).
Anyway, I was talking to my therapist the other day about my struggles with leadership and what has become the quite onerous task of chairing a committee. I don’t remember exactly what got us to this point but at some moment my therapist used a surprisingly religious word: “abiding.” It really struck a chord and has unfolded for me over the last several days.
To “abide” or “abide with” is to wait. Of course the Oxford English Dictionary has about 22 variations on this but they essentially add up to this idea of waiting. There’s a subtext in the word abide though, a subtext of “patience” and maybe too of “trust.” In religious contexts we often hear that God is abiding in or with us, or we are asked what it might mean for us to abide in God. To have a sense of patience that things will unfold and become clear—or clearer anyway—in their own right time.
It’s extremely difficult, especially as a 21st century rational skeptic, to have patience with God. For a culture now used to getting answers to anything we want as fast as our 3G networks will facilitate a Google search, God’s time can be a real challenge.
But apparently it can be just as challenging to abide in and with ourselves. For our core, essential, authentic self to abide—to wait patiently, trustingly—with our Ego, our inhibitions, our insecurities. How can we abide with ourselves as we make mistakes, as we act from our petty or scared places, as we face situations that challenge our greatest weaknesses? When we are able to abide—to wait patiently, trustingly—then we can learn and grow without judging ourselves, without beating ourselves up. By abiding we can love ourselves in all our human frailty.
