Make straight your paths...

A few weeks ago, after a poor night’s sleep where dreams merged into wakefulness at about two in the morning, words were rolling around my mind about straight paths. The dreams felt like they had come out of some sort of conflict in the dreams which had taken place in a church but by morning I couldn’t remember who the arguments had been with.

By morning the straight paths were still in my mind so I searched for them and found this:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart;

and be not wise in your own sight.

In all your ways acknowledge him

and he will make straight your paths.

The words are from Proverbs and are in the photo here and had obviously got stuck in my head as I woke up at two in the morning having dreamt about a heated conversation in a church, with an unknown entity, with the words, "make your paths straight" in my mind.

I also realised they are part of morning prayer every Monday and that I had also seen this on another bloggers page and it had obviously struck a chord.

I had been anticipating another meeting with the DDO the following week, at home, which had added to the stress and my head was telling me that impressions count and while they shouldn’t my heart also tells me that they do (perhaps not as much as I worry they may but even so...), because even DDO’s are human.

These words though were a reassurance. That whatever doubts and worries may try to confuse me, I just need to keep on a straight path. That’s all.

In the end, the meeting went well. We talked about models of priesthood, which is something I’ve been struggling with, perhaps because I may lack enough experience of other models (something I'm working on and worth a few posts on it's own). So I asked to put that on pause for a while and instead we spoke about leadership and collaboration. Which I think went well; I hope it did! Each meeting can feel like a job interview, a little friendlier though, where there are some difficult questions and you don’t get immediate feedback. The practice I’ve adopted is honesty, pure and simple, even if I know it’s not the right thing to say or may lead to more questions. But to be honest with myself is quite a challenge, it’s not something we find easy as we all put up so many walls and defences, but it’s the only way; to trust in the Lord and to keep the path straight.

Another positive note was that the living room was tidier than it has been for ages!