It’s true. That is a perfect description of my feelings early in my faith walk as I moved through a fast-paced and stressful life as a CEO. I was constantly battling anxiety, emotional confusion, and anger. A negative pattern developed when I failed to off-load those pesky issues to God.
I had a case of seemingly incurable whiplash.
Each new wave of anxiety hijacked my mind to the wrong things and I drifted farther away from God and his truth. My life was in a perpetual state of whiplash that seemed permanent. At least that’s what I thought at the time. I didn’t know that God could and would eventually relieve the pain.
My feeble calls to God for relief failed to provide a cure because I was going to him much too late. I had guaranteed my misery by going to him in a state of intense pain and confusion from the chronic whiplash. I had guaranteed that I would not model Christ and set a mature Christian example for those around me. Worst of all, I had guaranteed that finding my purpose in Christ would lay fallow and his promises unclaimed.
THE WRONG DIRECTION
I was on a road that would have me miss growing spiritually and being used by God to help others. My life car was traveling in the wrong direction because I never expected anything to change. But God said NO WAY and beckoned me to come HIS WAY by handing the whiplash to him in trust and surrender.
So that’s what I did and the pain began its retreat and eventual departure behind this truth:
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Galatians 2:20
THE LESSON
I learned a powerful lesson from my “whiplash years.”
Our intention to move toward God is real, but we can easily drift in the opposite direction unless we stay connected to him every day and release our thoughts, emotions, and fears in real time. With “nothing to lose,” I did exactly that and learned to live in the moment and enjoy what God was doing in me and through me in that moment.
God helped me erase my proclivity to wait for some “nirvana moment” in the future that I had choreographed in my mind and gripped firmly. In the past, that had been the trigger for my whiplash when I fixated on what “I thought” was joy by chasing success and materialism.
Are you experiencing any pain from spiritual whiplash?
