The two things:
1. Managing my life
2. Turning my life over to God
I can't do both at once.
If I try, I will fail at both.
How do I know I haven't turned over my life to God?
I'm thinking about it.
All I should think about is:
(a) What to do today, which might include:
- Deliberate, targeted, closed-ended examination of the past for learning;
- Deliberate, targeted, closed-ended examination of the future for planning.
(b) Whatever I'm presently doing.
If I'm frightened, guilty, ashamed, or resentful, I'm managing my life again.
If I'm at peace, I've turned my life over to God.
If I'm not at peace, I've made the wrong decision.
Unmake it.
Remake the right one.
Come back to peace now and stay there.
How?
- Sit, kneel, lie, whatever.
- Ask God to come into my presence until there is nothing else but God.
- Ask for peace and affirm it will come.
- Stay there until God fills my consciousness, pushing out all fear, guilt, shame, and anger.
- Imagine God like a balloon or a cloud, starting small within me, and growing ...
- ... until the bubble or cloud is way bigger than me.
- And everything and everyone else lies outside it.
- And nothing can get me.
- Do not give up.
- Be still and know that God is God.
Whenever I leave peace, I must come back.
The more this is practised, the better I get at it.