A Mindful Beauty, or A Beautiful Mind?

It's been a very intense week personally. But really GOOD at the same time. God's amazing that way.
Mind if I tell you a little about it?? I've heard about people screwing themselves by over-blogging and I hope that's not what I'm about to do here but I have been in a pattern lately of not writing anything personal. So, if you're up for it, I am too.

Have you ever seen A Beautiful Mind? KA Roommate and I watched it again recently. I hadn't seen it since It was in the theater. Even when I watched it then, I remember relating very much to how John Nash consciously made the choice to ignore the people in his mind.
He said: "I still see things...I just choose not to acknowledge them...it's like a diet of the mind...I choose not to induldge in certain appetites."
It was a choice. I loved how they portrayed that he chose his path and though thse people still hung out in the corners of his mind he purposely ignored them and they became powerless.

This last year the phrase from Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing has meant something to me that it never did before.
"Let thy goodness like a fetter bind my wand'ring heart to Thee."
-- that never made any sense to me before. I knew in my head that God was good. "God is Good and God is Great and we thank him for our food " -- or however that went. "God is a good God." I've read that and I've heard it and been taught it my whole life. But my logic told me God could not really be that good, if the world looks like this. And if MY being good still left me in pain and needy -- well then I wanted no part of it!
I still don't have an answer for that. There is no answer for that. How does a Good God allow what takes place in this world? Well, it's complex, and it's simple and it's something we can't know - not being God ourselves. I accept by faith that God really is Good or I don't.

Here's another quote from the movie:
"Sylvia: How big is the universe?
John: Infinite.
Sylvia: How do you know for sure?
John: I don't, I just believe it. "

I know me, and how I got here. It's not rocket science - I'm a textbook case of how someone can grow up to be me. I've always known why I am the way I am, but it gave me no power to make the right choices. Sure I could white knuckle it through life but I didn't want to do that either. What point is there in that? So eventually I learned that what I needed was healing for my mind and my heart because I knew that God knew what my wounds were even when I didn't. That path has led me to this place where I can have the strength (should I accept it) to choose to say no to patterns that are destructive to me and to others, and it gives me hope that I will be more consistant with that all the time.

What's interesting is that what God chooses to heal is hardly ever what I expect, but the astounding thing is that in the healing of one thing, another thing becomes smaller and yet another, better thing grows larger - miraculous.

In the movie, there is a scene where Sylvia (John's wife) decides to stay with John, and she says "I have to believe that something extraordinary can happen." And it's really quite the same with me. To commit to this path, I must believe that something extraordinary can happen. To wait for something extraordinary to happen before I commit means I may never know what might have been.