Tunnel Vision

We have been experiencing something lately in the kingdom.  A phenomenon that I can only attribute to extreme tunnel vision brought on by distinct lapses in common sense and feelings of entitlement.

What else causes us to focus on one thing to the point where acquiring that "thing" consumes our thoughts and our actions until the desired result is in our hands.  We have to possess it.  We have to acquire it at all costs.  We throw warnings, cautions and any common sense to the wind.  Our life is ruled by absolutes.  We are like addicts.  We deceive ourselves.   Everyone else has this.  Everyone else does this.  I am the only one without.  I am the only one not allowed to do this.   

I understand selfishness. However when the focus is so consuming that until the desired "thing" is yours, that goes beyond just plain selfishness.  It becomes foolish.  

At some point in life we all have to make a choice to continue to be a fool or to be wise.  Not wise in our own understanding, because that leads back to the way of the proverbial fool. but to desire wisdom, to see and understand how tunnel vision affects more than just yourself and to flee from all things that cause us to fall under discipline and consequences because of poor choices.  To stay intentional and purposeful on the path of foolishness, makes my head hurt, my heart ache for the future, and my soul cry out to the Lord for an intervention, an "ah hah" moment. 

The fools (in this case a couple dwarfs) are drawn to sin/poor choices/poor behaviors. It is like they have a homing devise implanted deep within them, that draws them in. Where some know right from wrong, or can steer away from questionable situations, others just dive right in, and not even at the prompting of another.  On their own, under their own steam, their original ideas, because they are so focused on what they have to have or what they feel that they are missing.  Now as a mom of so many, am I more aware of some of the dwarfs and their poor choices because their issues of focus are more overt than some of the other dwarfs in the house, most assuredly.  But the part that just makes me scratch my head is that they seem to draw pleasure from the grief, that the poor choices bring.  Always they are found out.  No matter what the object of their desire is, it is always uncovered and brings more heartache and consequences to them, yet at the end of the day, it is if it never happened, AND they go back and repeat the same poor behavior with a renewed tunnel vision focus in the hopes that this time the results will be different.  (This is the living working definition of insanity, alive and well in our kingdom.)

This week I read in my quiet time this scripture from II Timothy 3, "In the last days perilous times will come: For [people] will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud...headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God" (vv1-4)  I fear that some of my dwarfs are on this path.  I am concerned that as their mother, I am not doing enough to guide and direct their path away from this tunnel vision thinking.  As a believer it is alarming to me that I see this in living color, in my own home where I feel so powerless to stop it, curb it, diminish it or make it disappear. 

I am sure that I am not alone in knowing and loving someone that struggles in the area of making good choices, and repeating the poor ones thinking somehow today the outcome will be different. As much as I say this to myself, I hope you will be encouraged too, the Lord loves my dwarfs even more than I do.  I am doing what I can for them, in the consistent message we send, in our unconditional love,  how we live our life and the decisions that we make in front of them and by praying continually for their hearts to soften to the still small voice of the Lord.  Selfishly, I also pray that I or another will always find out their schemes, that the things they desire, will literally be like hot coals in their hands once they are acquired, and that their conscience will bring them forward to own up to their poor choices.  

Right now we are still at the stage where their tunnel vision issues are all being found out about, but I so desire the day when they come to me and admit their poor choice, and seek to make things right, or if I could dare to dream so big, the day that they walk away from their selfish desires, think through their actions to what the end result may be, and choose wisely to start with.   

Parenting is not for the faint of heart.

There are days when I wish I could make some of this stuff up...