Last Exit Before Oblivion

My favorite survival technique became not caring. Time took me with it and eventually whatever was going to happen, good or bad, would happen and then be consumed by the past. The technique does work. I survived.
    In some cases it was even true. I might not have been able to control things, such as interactions with unpleasant people, but I learned that I could wait longer than they were willing to, and they'd go away. I also suspect that God's hand was involved here; mine wasn't on the tiller but the boat didn't crash.
    As a basis for life, however, not caring is a real disaster. Not caring leads to bad default decisions of many self-destructive kinds. Somehow, although I adopted the "I don't care" attitude toward many things, I still had a core respect or caring for life that kept me out of major trouble. Maybe that was the survival principle--don't do anything terminal because those lead to great discomfort--trumping the not caring. I did, at the very least, care about pain.
    The problem I have now is that not caring is easy. I can lie back and simply coast. Each day comes along regardless of my desires, the sun crosses the sky, and then it's done. What should I care about? What am I allowed to care about? This is a very tender spot. As soon as God even comes near, I duck away in fright.
    A life of not caring, though... for me, got to the point of "Why bother?" Not caring is a dead end. Caring leads to judgment, which leads to not caring and the same dead end. For many years I tried to escape that circle. When God picked me up in 2003 I wasn't even thinking about freedom;  it was bare survival. Freedom came later, after I'd begun to learn about self-judgment, which learning started with seeing Jesus more clearly.
    There is freedom in not caring. I think part of what God is teaching me now is that there are things I need to care about, and there are other things I need to leave in his hands. It's interesting, because I know he cares, but I'm afraid that what God cares about won't be anything I'm interested in. For most of my life I have been told I care about the wrong things. I expect the same from God but he has never said anything to me like that.
    So much of this life with Jesus is different from what I was taught, what I expected. Once free from judgment, many other things become possible. Onward we go.

2012 July 24