Balance on the Continuum

Back in college as a psychology major, I took my two courses in Abnormal Psych over the summer before my Fourth Year. As with many nursing and medical students, reading about different syndromes and diagnoses often resulted in being sure that I was afflicted with them. One of the most helpful things I learned that summer was about the continuum. Behaviors run across a continuum, from very mild to severe. The reality is that most, if not all of us, exhibit those behaviors in our lives from time to time. We may show a bit of paranoia, or hypochondria, or phobia, or whatever. For most of us those bits are just that—bits—and they certainly do not overwhelm our lives. There may well be times when we find them overwhelming. And there are persons who deal with them in much larger segments than bits.

Over the years I have done a great deal of work to develop self-awareness. When I think I have grown, and then find a lack of it looking me straight in my face, I have a tendency to enlarge it. Then what has seemed golden and good gets a coating of slime. I lose a bit of the sense of balance, and see more things through the glasses of lack.

The reality is that I am the same person now as before. I have grown, but I am not perfect. I need to go back and re-play that lecture on a continuum and find balance. I also need to face the fact that try as hard as I can, I cannot see through the veil. I can only see through the mirror dimly. Someday, I will see my Lord face to face, and in God’s eyes, see myself clearly. Until that day, I have to be content with vision that tends to mis-see. In those moments, I need to surrender myself to God’s grace, and allow the Spirit to help me grow where I need to grow, bit by bit.

1 Corinthians 13:12

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.