Coming to and thru the crash!

I'm sitting on the couch this afternoon relaxing and restoring my other laptop because it crashed.  I don't know why it crashed it just did.  It was very inconvenient when it did and was frustrating too.  So while I was sitting here I began to think about how sometimes in life my whole system seems to crash and has to be restored.  That really got me to thinking which I know seems to be far fetched but it does happen from time to time.  I really enjoy sitting and thinking about all the different angles of life and even enjoy trying to go past the surface level of life to get to the deep motivations of the heart.  That seems to be what has me pondering this afternoon... What has led me up to my system crashes, and what differences did they make in my life.

I'll say right off that I think some of my crashes have been the greatest things in my life while others weren't so much.   What I really want to focus my heart on now is the good stuff I've gotten from them.  What's going through my mind is the life lessons I see between the two.  The first place my mind goes when I think about the computer crash is a lot the same as when my life crashes... what did I lose?  What if I can't get it back?  In this case I didn't lose anything significant because I haven't been using my laptop lately.  In life though, crashes usually mean the loss of relationships or at least some stress added to them.  I've had two of those crashes in the last 6 years.  They were very painful, frustrating, and awkward to say the least and not just for me.  I believe those feelings were mutual on both sides of the crash.  I realize a nugget of truth here... the documents that are most important are backed up and so are the deep meaningful relationships in my life.  They are backed up with a lot of time invested, grace extended, forgiveness applied, and love lavished from both sides.  That is after all what makes them the most important isn't it?

Another nugget of truth that is beginning to be uncovered is that there are times on my computer when all the old files begin to hinder and even stop the progress.  My hard drive is full and it will not hold any more information no matter how good it is, no matter how hard I've worked on the document... it just won't go forward.  That describes a lot of the things I've believed in my life.  Some of it was just junk and should have never been stored on my heart drive.  Some of it was good for the season of life I was in at the time and should have been removed when it's shelf life expired.  On the other hand some of it was core.  By that I mean it was just as valuable then as it is now.  It's value is deep because of the investment that was poured into it.  Where I've gotten into the trouble that brought me to the crash was that I was unwilling to dump the useless stuff or to get rid of the out of date stuff until it caused a crash.  That's where I am now... formatting my hard drive so that I can reload the operating system that will make it work the best.  That's what I realize as I look back on the things that God has asked me to leave behind.  It's not that it was all bad it was just keeping me from being the best me I could be.  Some of it was information that I had accepted as truth while some of it was people that I had aligned myself with.  I'll be clear that it wasn't that they were bad or wrong or anything like that... just that we we no longer going the same direction.  We are prone to do what has been called the crab effect.  When those around us try to go another direction we tend towards holding them back.  We do this in part because of concern for their well being, but the other part of that is we try to hold them back because their new found freedoms tend to make us uncomfortable and we don't like that so we do what the crabs do when one tries to crawl out of the cage... we grab hold and don't let go.  I know this because I've been on both sides of this dance and for both reasons.  If we continue to hold onto the old outdated information or choose to remain in the relationships where there is no unity then we cannot move forward on our journey making the statement, "One of the greatest hinderances to our current or future success is our past success."  This is also known as being in rut and the only difference between a rut and a grave is that one has the ends knocked out.  I would also add that when a system restore takes place in my life the goal is not to destroy the relationships with people from the past but I have come to realize that most of the time we as Christians are too shallow to remain in relationship with someone who doesn't see things exactly like we do.  This is to our great disadvantage but it is none the less a truth.

Man this process seems to be taking a long time!  The computer has come back up but now all the applicable drivers are being loaded and all the automatic updates are downloading and installing.  Then after that there will be the time spent loading the programs.  Thinking about that reminds me of what life looks like after one of those crash events.  Our last one, my family and I, led us to what we called the wilderness where we didn't really spend a lot of time in relationship with anyone for a period of three years.  This was a time of reflection just like I'm reflecting now on how I wish I would have taken a little time to clean off the old stuff so there was room for the new on the computer.  It was a time where I reflected on how I had related with the Church as an institution, how I had related to others based on what they believed or didn't believe... etc.  As I look back there are things that I noticed that were screaming for a change but I ignored them just like I ignored the slowing of the applications on my computer.  I can't go back and undo what is done so I don't waste time doing so, but I do learn to be more attentive to the signs now.  I become more attentive to the directions I need to be going and the ones I don't.

Another nugget that I am picking up is that my operating system has been updated.  I'm not the same as I was.  I don't think like I used to think.  I'm not focused on the things I used to be focused on.  I'm different and have to have a different operating system than I started with.  I need different programs than I used to as well.  I no longer do the same things I once did so I no longer need those programs on my hard drive or my heart drive.  Just as they take up unneccessary room on my computer they take up unneccessary room on my heart.  When my heart is full of the junk then I can't get the good, life giving stuff in that I need to continue forward. 

I should probably wind this thing down.  There are probably a lot of other truths or nuggets that a person could get out of this whole process and to be honest if you find yourself thinking about those then the whole purpose of this blog has been accomplshed.  Sometimes it takes the physical things in life to make us see the spiritual ones.  As much as I wish I could get this thing called life figured out and running smooth, deep down inside I know that its these crashes that cause me to slow down enough to see just how unbalanced my life has become so I can make the adjustments that will bring me back to a place of optimal performance.

Enjoy the journey!