everyone gets fired

Why do I allow myself to waste in anxiety? Either something has happened that I want to change (regret) or something might happen that I want to avoid (worry). Either anxiety has the same effect—sleeplessness, mental exhaustion, depression, fear, isolation, acid indigestion—it’s like there’s this fireworm eating my insides away, burning and burning and burning, never tiring of burning.

It’s kind of like being in hell.

I was lately thinking that my problem may not be weak faith or “sin in my life” or lacking spiritual gifts or negligence to take up authority by naming and claiming the fireworm’s demise. My problem may be that I need to die.

It’s like there are these arrows that are shot into me or that I can see coming in, and I am trying like heck to push them away or pull them out. Maybe I should love the arrows for what they are killing in me, piece by piece—first a hand, then an eye, then a foot, and so on, until only I remain.

I think there are two ways to avoid anxieties: sudden deliverance or sudden death. Either someone stronger than me has to rescue me, or I have to be killed. And I can sum up my part in both of these in two words: LET GO. Neither worry nor regret can accomplish sudden deliverance or sudden death. Only letting go can.

Surely God in his mercy does not want me anxious. Paul wrote to the Philippians, “Be anxious for nothing”, and Psalm 127 talks about the vanity of being anxious because God gives sleep to those he loves. Now it comes to me that sleep is a metaphor for death. Hmm. Let go.

Tomorrow I’m going to a memorial service for my grandmom who went to sleep Sunday morning and won’t be waking up in this world. When I called my aunt, she said, “Granna was just exhausted.” But the fire is quenched now. She let go.

Jesus said it’s better to enter life maimed than to enter hell with two hands, better to lose an eye and a foot than to be tossing and turning in one piece where “the worm doesn’t die and the fire isn’t quenched”. And Jesus promises that everyone gets fired, it’s just a matter of whether the fire will be quenched or not. I have experienced both. I really think that I could have enjoyed peace and beat that worm if I had let go.

Something that helps me let go of stuff is accepting that the fireworm is from God. George MacDonald said,

I believe that justice and mercy are simply one and the same thing. Such is the mercy of God that he will hold his children in the consuming fire of his distance until they pay the uttermost farthing, until they drop the purse of selfishness with all the dross that is in it, and rush home to the Father and the Son, and the many brethren—rush inside the center of the life-giving fire whose outer circles burn.

Everyone gets fired. (Mark 9:42) The question is will we let go? The question is when?