Mulling

[banzai]

Just watched a hummingbird flit about outside of Irwin's. Fun.

Spent more time at the movie theater in the last couple of weeks than I have in ages. The list:

• WALL•E (at Cinerama with barlow_girl, velouria73, and Carrie)
  
• The Incredible Hulk (at the Metro with barlow_girl)
  
• When Did You Last See Your Father? (at Seven Gables with barlow_girl)
  
• Hellboy II: The Golden Army (solo at the Metro)

Mulling a bunch of life focus stuff all at once, which doesn't feel like it's getting me much of anywhere at all (at least, not quickly). Decisions are tough-when I choose x, I'm not choosing a-w, y, or z. Obvious, but challenging nonetheless. I tend to want to find ways to hybridize the options, and often there are possibilities to do so, but it makes evaluating the choices all the more difficult. What I want should also be informed by my values and my context, but often there's a part of me that just wants what I want, period. That part can be extremely selfish and cunningly subtle. tugging me along without my conscious awareness.

So Romans 7:7-25 is in full effect, and it gets especially tricky when deciding between "good" and "best." There's also a categorical shorthand that's deeply rooted and difficult to suspend-assumptions that some choices are "better" without really unpacking them and examining whether that's true.

What I'm just beginning to realize-and very tempted to back away from, because it's scary-is that lots of my functional values don't match my conscious values at all. I don't want to admit my laziness, my greed, my insecurity, and dozens of other ugly things that drive me far more than they should. Further, I also don't know that I can trust the opposite pendulum swing, to simply make choices that seem noble without really examining them. And the very last thing I want to do is just wallow, wallow, wallow "in the tension," because I've too often seen that be a cop out to full-blown self-absorption. Yuck.

Romans 7:24-25 has the answer: "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin." But the how of it is very much a mystery, one I must be willing to trust beyond my ability to understand. Just like Him.