Letting Go of the Need to Be Secure

I continue to think about this idea that instead of praying to feel safe I could pray to accept insecurity. One reader asked whether we need to feel safe in order to grow. Maybe it’s a matter of degrees? I certainly was unsafe often as a kid and that made growing up hard, but then I did grow “strong in the broken places.” Unfortunately those strengths (people reading, ESP, mastering crisis situations) are both strengths and weaknesses as an adult.

I am as shocked as anyone that I even had this thought that I should pray to accept insecurity so I’m trusting that it could be an unexpected answer to a prayer. Life is not secure or stable and only relatively predictable so instead of fighting to make it lie down and obey maybe there’s a way to say, “There it goes again” and laugh?

I think it is a matter of degrees. At certain ages and in certain ways we need to be safe but then we have to learn to accept insecurity. But if you grow up in a family where it’s too insecure you just feel that any insecurity is wrong? I’m gonna be chewing on this one for a while.

But here are some rather mild ways to warm up to the idea of letting go of security. These are baby steps in embracing instability:

• Try new and exotic foods each week—a new cuisine in a new restaurant in a new part of town. Extra points if you let someone else order for you.

• Buy a new ingredient and cook with it without asking anyone how to use it. Extra points if you buy it in a store where you can’t decipher the language.

• Go to a movie that you do NOT know about. No reviews, no comments from friends.

• Deliberately get lost when driving: turn left, then left, then right etc. Do this in daylight and try to not pay attention to any directions or compass points. No GPS lady either.

• Listen to new music for a week--especially any radio stations that immediately seem annoying.

• Go to some event, location, or one-time class that seems “weird” “odd” or stupid when you see it listed in the paper.

• Each day do something that puts you physically off balance: stand on one foot, do a yoga pose, walk along a curb, lie on one of those great big exercise balls, sit on a ladder.