Set Point

How do you process things that are going on in your life? Rapidly, slowly?  Internally—mentally? Externally—verbally?

            How do you react when God taps something in your life and says, in effect, “That has to go?” Do you breathe a sigh of relief, or do you hang on to your dear, tapped thing and refuse to let anyone, even God, touch your precious, just like Gollum in Lord of the Rings?

            Lately I’ve been reading a variety of things that have little to do with each other, but all seem to say that humans emotionally and physiologically crave returning to what we consider our norm.  Whenever something stresses us, we want our norm returned. Can you relate to that? I can.

 I remembered that every fall, when I returned to college, the first things that I did when I got to my dorm room were to set up my clock radio and get my quilt on my bunk. They gave me a sense of home—a norm I wanted at that time. I desire my norm most of the time—with my job, my relationships, my health. You and I are stressed when we get moved off that center of equilibrium that functions as our set point.

            We do whatever we can to get back to that point. Some things aren’t bad to do, like my cup of tea after a pfft day. But other things are destructive, like saying the same things over and over to a spouse and not getting the results we hope for. (Isn’t that the definition of insanity?)

            Today I was off kilter, not on my set point, and my equilibrium was disturbed. I badly wanted to sit on the center of the teeter-totter again. To do so, I invested time and effort to regain that sweet spot.

            The whole world is off its center—physically and humanly speaking. What seems normal in the physical world is only what we are used to seeing in the world around us. Humanity is the same. My center is my norm, what I’m used to, what I want my life to be. It’s what seems normal to me—my comfort zone.

            What God wants is to move that zone. I don’t want him to do that. I like my norm. But his norm is better. He’s always extending me the invitation to move into his zone.  I’m not always so sure about his zone, if I’m perfectly honest. Sometimes I want to keep trying the insanity method, even though it continues to fail, just because it’s familiar.

            If I try stepping into the God zone, I could end up in Egypt, like Joseph, leaving my hometown like Sarai, becoming a leader, like Gideon, when I would rather stay in my kitchen. I don’t want a new norm.

            So lately, as God has tapped something in my life, I flinch and squirm. I feel shame and relief. And I look at my insane way of coping and get ready to move to a new norm, because as I’ve kept one foot stubbornly anchored to the old norm and inched the other toward the new, I’ve realized how much better the new is going to be. God is there waiting for me.

            He always is, always has been. His set point surpasses any of mine. And he patiently waits until I’m ready so he can teach me and show me that it’s a great place to be, even though it may look crazy from my own point of insanity.          

Where is God moving your set point?