My life is extremely orderly, and I spend a lot of time and put a lot of effort into sorting out every small detail, 'getting ahead of the curve', avoiding surprises. I don't take on too much; I do what I do well, even though I strictly needn't.
I treat my 'head' the same way: I deal with every little resentment and fear. I look at every piece of behaviour that snags my attention' and figure out what the programme response is. I really needn't, strictly, do this, for the sake of sobriety at any rate. I could probably do less and be just fine.
But then, yesterday, something happened that showed me a glimpse of why I take pains and work against the spirit of the age.
I had a leisurely day, in the office from 6.00 a.m. to 5.20 p.m. with a couple of hours at lunch out running and then having something to eat, plus a AA meeting. At 5.20 p.m. an agency calls me, and there had been a mess-up with whether a job was going ahead. They needed a job that would take a day or two to complete by 4.00 p.m. just gone, and they had me down as the supplier. It was soon realised that the mistake was theirs, and they were apologetic.
What to do?
Well, I could have said, 'Hard luck. I'm off. It's Friday evening. I can do this next week.' But there was a chain of people downstream of this job (lawyers here, lawyers there), and therefore a chain of panic and disappointment. I reviewed what I could do.
Because my life is orderly, because I am not constantly beset by overdue tasks, because I'm well ahead of the curve, because I keep my schedule as free as possible, because everything is done, ironed, and put away, as it were, I could set to it, at 5.22 p.m. I did not wait to be asked: I simply started and let them know I was 'on it'.
Because my mind is clear, it seems able to adjust to the demands of situations. I thought: for the evening not to be ruined, for Saturday not to be ruined (I'm travelling today, and before that I'm running), to have my dinner at a decent time, and to eat decent food (I of course had prepared food in the fridge, because that's what orderly people do), I thought: 'If I'm done by 9.15 p.m., I'll be home by 9.30 p.m. dinner on the table by 10.00 p.m., in bed by 11.00 p.m., up at 5.30 a.m. as usual, and I'm back on track.' And I had done a day or two's work by 9.15 p.m. (the precise moment I delivered the completed work). My mind was able entirely to free itself of distractions and focus entirely on the task at hand.
Message from the client at 10.15 p.m.: they were thrilled. Everyone was happy downstream.
Trusting God is eerie. I had an uncanny ('unheimlich') feeling all day, but I quietly pottered around, sorting little things out, getting things in order, not really understanding what was going on. But by 11.00 p.m., the day made sense.
It is only afterwards that everything makes sense.
It's a trivial situation and a trivial story, and my life is largely trivial, but I think the point is not: there is a meaning, an order, a purpose to existence, and God is entirely in charge. One can resist and rebel or just buckle under and take what comes. I've opted for the latter, and things do work out very well indeed.