Integrity and My Thought Life

I wish my thoughts worked like sentences. I wish they were linear and complete with subjects and verbs. I wish they organized themselves with three points and an introduction and conclusion. They do not.

Books process in sequence. You read one thought and the next thought. If it is not well written, the next thought may not connect well, but it is always one thought after the other. One at a time. This is peaceful and comforting and usually boring.

I process in parallel, and I hate it. I am always thinking about multiple things at the same time. Not that I jump back and forth from one to another, but actually occurring at the same. Maybe this is how most people think, and you are thinking that this comment is obvious and stupid. Maybe you think this is really weird, and you're thinking I should get some professional help.

For me, trying to understand what I am thinking is like sitting on the edge of a highway. My thoughts move so fast they are blurry and I have hardly understood what I am thinking before it is gone, out of sight and a dozen other thoughts whizzing past. I try to focus on one and understand it but while I do several others move fly by unscrutinized. I try to zoom out and understand the who and I come up with a blurry picture of myself with all these different ideas and thoughts melted together, indistinct and unhelpful like trying to figure out which flavors were in melted rainbow sherbet.

There is always a part of me that is planning the next five minutes a part of me that is thinking about the next year and a part of me that is examining memories of the past and a part of me that analyzing my surroundings. A part of me is wondering how that dent got in the wall while another part of me is thinking about something I read this morning and another part of me is thinking about constructing this sentence correctly.

Another part of me is analyzing it to see if it actually expresses what I wanted and another part of me is wondering is I finished cleaning up in the kitchen. Another part of me is often replaying a song or a movie in the back of my head and sometimes pauses to analyze some lyrics or a scene. Another part of me is talking to myself and explaining to myself whatever I am focused on, while another part is thinking of a metaphor to understand what I am focused on, which, by the way, changes every 2-3 seconds.

I am always trying to bring one strand of thought to the forefront of my mind so I can focus on it and do something meaningful, but it is a constant struggle because lyrics from the song or an imagined video (yes, I see video in my head) from the extended metaphor I am creating pops into my head. This triggers more links and tangents and very quickly I have completely lost my train of thought, although is is really more like an 8 lane superhighway than a train. Trains have one care after the other, highways move in parallel.

I like writing because it forces me to be sane. It forces me to take things one step, one sentence at a time, and put my thoughts in a sequence. Then, I can read over it and understand in a more ordered way what the whole of me is thinking or feeling. Most of the things I write are not written in the order you read them in. I select and drag sentences to make paragraphs of sentences that work together.

It annoys me that I lack the discipline to isolate a train of thought and focus on it very well. It annoys me that I constantly have to refocus and bring myself back to what I was trying to do or just think about. This is, I think, a part of the way God made me. And as frustrating as it is and as much as I hate feeling weird, I think it is okay.

However, it seriously bother me that I often process different things from different parts of my character, with different viewpoints, different values, and different beliefs. For example, until last year, I believed that I was saved by grace through faith, and that salvation was not from myself, that is was the free gift of God, that was given to me because God is loving and kind and gracious, but I also believed that having been saved by faith I was supposed to become more like God by working hard at it myself out of duty because God more or less left it all up to me to sink or swim as I would. (I mostly sunk.) My perspective on personal holiness was compartmentalized from my perspective on God, which left me with more or less two completely different gods, and I ascribed to one in certain areas and another in other areas.

Originally, integrity meant "the quality or state of being complete or undivided." The idea of moral uprightness is a relatively recent understanding of the term. It comes from the Latin word 'integer,' which means 'whole.' This is something I have been struggling with a lot.

I have been doing much better at seeing the world with an integrated worldview, that is, having a consistent view of God and His world and he creatures and sons and daughters. I don't think that I presently have two gods in any areas, with one ruling one area and one ruling another. I think the God is God over my whole life, and this is an important part of integrity. I do this when I don't bring all of reality to myself. I would handle the religious part of reality when I felt pious and the harsh parts of reality when I felt like problem solving and the warm and fuzzy parts of reality when I felt sad, instead of engaging the comprehensive picture of reality at all times. I would pick and choose what pieces of reality I wanted to deal with.

Recently, I've been doing better about dealing with all of reality at a time, with not compartmentalizing my worldview. However, I'm starting to realize that I don't bring all of me to reality. I play to my strengths too much. There are parts of my character that are (relatively) highly developed and there are parts that are underdeveloped.

It may be that I am always stronger in some areas that in others, but that shouldn't be an excuse to abandon the other parts of me. I try to develop that parts of me that I am already strong in and I ignore the other parts almost entirely. It's like only lifting weights with your right arm just because you're right handed.

Recently, I've been reading Integrity by Henry Cloud. He says that most people only use parts of their character to interact with reality, and if we would develop and use all of character, that we would be much more effective in whatever it is we have chosen to do. I think this may be what I need. I am really curious about how Dr. Cloud advises we do this, because he's been pretty vague so far. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Awhile ago, I prayed about all this. The prayer was, like most of my thoughts, very nonlinear and nonverbal, but that I was okay with, because I knew God understood me better than I did. Later I tried to express to other people what had happened that night when I prayed, what I had said and what I felt God had said and done. It was very difficult for me to articulate, so I wrote it into a dialogue and something like a poem. I will leave you with this.

Me: God, the God of the whole universe, the biggest God there could be, where are you, and how should I address you?

God: I'm here.

Me: To the God in the seat in front of me...

Me: Hmm, perhaps that's not good. It makes the seat something like a Jesus Christ, or an idol don't you think? Why don't we try again?

Me: You're right. Okay. To the God who is somewhere between the lenses of my glasses and the seat in front of me And also lives in me: There is a problem.

God: Yes?

Me: See, I don't know really how to fix the problem or what it is at all and I would like to fix it but I don't think I could. Even supposing I knew what it was, and how it could be fixed.

God: Where is the problem?

Me: Well, I suppose the problem is in the way I interact with everyone I know, and I could be wrong, but, I think it's in how they interact with each other to. And I'm really not sure, but the problem might be
with almost everyone. And I don't know if it's only interaction with people. Maybe it's how I interact with almost everything.

Me: Everything? Really? What about the Bible? What about God?

Me: Okay, God, we don't think it's strictly everything. We think it's most things, but not the way I pray, and not really how we study the Bible.

God: Okay.

Me: So, I want you to fix it. I mean, I can't hardly fix it I don't even know what's wrong. But if you could just fix it in me, it would be really great. Could you show me how to pray?

God: Okay.

---------------------------------------------------

The following prayer was mostly so nonlinear and wordless that I have not tried to put it to words. Rather I have picked out phrases I remember from that prayer and structured a poem around them and attempted, in the poem, to express the same main idea as in my prayer.

To the God of the whole universe,
God over every moment,
God here in front of me,
God here inside me:

I want to worship you,
in spirit and in truth,
but how is that done?

I want to be thankful,
always and in everything,
but something is missing.

I want to pray at all times,
but I'm not sure that would help
with this issue.

I want all of life
to be a devotional.

I want to worship you
through everything I do.

Not in spite of it.

I want you to be God, and my God:

God of video games.
God of friendships.
God of lunch and dinner.
God of showers.
God of homework.
God of playing sports.
God of reading books.
God of making jokes.
God of laughing.
God of waking up in the morning.
God of working out.
God of sleeping.
God of dreaming.
God of cleaning my room.
God of walking to class.
God of wondering at nature.
God of wondering at people.
God of being angry.
God of being lonely.
God of being hurt and sad.
God of being happy.
God of being bored.
God of being numb.
God of laundry.
God of taking notes.
God of taking tests.
God of acing tests.
God of failing tests.
God of awkward thirty-second conversations.
God of waking up in the middle of the night.
God of all-nighters.

God, I want you to be big enough to me to dominate and cover every aspect of my life.

God, I want to think about you always.
Or perhaps, I want to think about everything through you.

God, I want to worship you always.
Not in spite of what else I'm doing.
But through it.

God, I want my friendships
to be spiritual disciplines.
I want to know you more,
and glorify you through them.

I want to date,
as an act of worship.
I want to feel you,
if I hug a girlfriend.

I want to write term papers,
like lovesongs to you.
I want to read books,
and take in your Spirit.

I want to eat,
and chew with you.
I want to feel you
moving my jaw.

I want to drink,
to taste your bubbles on my tongue.
I want to experience you,
in everything.

I want to exercise
and build your muscles.
I want to love to
build your temple.

I want to write,
words from you and words for you,
In a text message
and on facebook.

I want to dream
to fulfill your passions.
I want to plan,
to charge towards your calling.

When I talk to someone,
I want to be praying.
I'm tired of talking,
Like you're not in the room.

I want to rest,
within your softness.
I want to feel you
coming on with sleep.

I want to live this moment,
with this heart beat,
and this half breath,
worshiping you.

Over and over again,
worshiping you,
through the living
of every moment.

One moment, maybe this one,
I want to die, to and for
and toward you,
worshiping.