A Plateau or A Ledge?

I often wake up in the morning with a song (or songs) playing in my head. I began writing them down several years ago as I grew more certain of the probability that they were placed there by God to minister to me, either in my sleep or when I awoke. I record them in my journal right under the date of a new day's entry. Sometimes there is no direct "message" for me through them but rather they're just beautiful praises to start my day with. Other times, there seems to be something directed right at my heart, something I need in a particular season. Sometimes I find, as the day's events unfold, my morning song is just what I need to help me through a challenge or disappointment. It comes to my mind along with the marveling that God placed it there for me before the challenge even reared it's head.  Here's how I noted my morning songs before I began writing the journal entry I'm about to share with you farther below:
"She's a broken lady, waiting to be mended
and have what's left of the pieces
put back in place."
(an old country song by the Gatlin brothers)
"Take it a day, a day at a time.
One foot in front of the other."
(from Amy Grant's newest album)

I hadn't heard the old Gatlin brothers song, Broken Lady, in decades. Yet God played it for me on the radio just days before I was to get a big reminder of how broken I still am. And then He used it so neatly this morning in conjuction with Amy Grant's song to encourage me that the mending of brokenness --and the putting back together of the pieces of brokenness--occur one day at a time, one choice at a time.

I then went on to write:

I have been resting on a plateau for some time now as regards fear. But that resting has also been resistance and reluctance to continue the climb. The journey is not over. There is more fear to conquer, more trust to engage. Because I am so fear prone, I think my life will be an endless climb over new fears and new challenges that lie outside my safety zone.

I think I had deluded myself  (by the ostrich's famous head-in-the-sand method) into thinking I could rest on this plateau indefinitely. However, it's more like a ledge than a plateau. A plateau elicits pictures of a wide open space, like a mesa, where there's room to roam and live freely. I thought the remainder of the climb --the finishing of the victory over fear -- would be subtle and accomplished in me gently and almost imperceptibly, without actual work on my part. Without effort and strain, without the assault of "fits of fear", big fears.

How naive of me. Like Much Afraid's journey in Hinds Feet On High Places, sometimes there are quiet days where The Shepherd leads along a gentle path. Then, all of a sudden He brings me to a cliff and says "Climb. Your destination is at the top."

I thought I was doing well with my fears until then. I rejoiced in how far removed I've felt and how far I've come from my starting point down in the "valley" where I was completely under the grip of fear all the time. I thought I could sort of coast from here on out.  It seems I delude myself with this notion repeatedly. Until He brings me a challenge bigger and more frightening than ever before. And I realize, in the ambush of old familiar fears, that I have gained only a measure of victory thus far. There is much more to conquer.

I also realize I have a choice. Will I press on, move forward despite my fresh fear, and face the climb? Or will I stay on this ledge?

Staying where I am resembles the place way back where I started, the place where I gave in to fear as a regular habit of my life. Staying here is, in essence, the same as going back.  He is calling me upward. He is calling me to move. Staying put on the ledge of partial maturity --partial victory, partial healing, partial trust-- when He is calling me up the cliff is basically the same thing as staying put in the valley from where I came. The choice is the same. It feels just as scary. In either place I have sheltered myself in a house made from the 2x4's of fear.  "OK, this is far enough. I've come a long way and it feels so much better," I say to myself as I ignore the remainder of the mountain above me. 

Staying here on this ledge of progress is the same as staying down below would have been. But why, when I've come so far and I'm in a different place than when I started?  Why is it the same when I've reached a measure of growth and victory far beyond where I started? Because it's the same refusal to the same questions posed to me by God:

Will you let Me lead you out of slavery to fear or will you stay in your slavery?

Will you let Me lead you to freedom or will you choose to be led and controlled by fear?

Will you follow Me to freedom or will you follow fear deeper into oppression?

Staying here on this ledge of progress (but not completion) is just as much a refusal to follow Him into freedom as it was in the years I remained in the valley from where I've traveled. Each refusal actually sends me backward on my journey.

I have come too far on this journey to want to lose ground and go back into the oppression from where I've come. I want more freedom. Acquiring it means traveling through another gauntlet of fear. Not just another, but many through the coming years.

But for now, it's just this one.