Betty: I do believe that your reluctance to write is a generational thing. I think it’s part why my older brother, who was brilliant and made a lot of advances, could never write. Other professors wrote up the stuff that he discovered, because his daughter said he was missing the writing gene. No, I don’t think we are missing the writing gene. I think we are all enslaved by the Perfectionist in our generational line. Nothing was ever good enough for us. Look at how much I was teaching? But when I went to write it down, it was never good enough. So, I never put it out there. It comes down to who do you want to serve? 

AM: God

Betty: Then act like it. Put these blogs out there, and if somebody criticizes it, so what? The reason you were not able to receive criticism from my friend, was because you hadn’t fully accepted that. You’re just starting to work it through today. You wanted to leave the back door open, so you could run back in a little hole, and hide as soon as criticism would start coming. I understand, but I think it’s time for you to make a decision to come out of the hole. And the major decision I want you to chew on literally is, “Do I want to serve God? Who is my Lord?” Of course, your Perfectionist would say, “She’s your Lord.” She’ll give you the answer, because she’s the Lord. No, she’s not. She’s hot air waiting to be expelled. 

AM: “Lord, I give you permission to declare yourself Lord over the whole of me…” 

Betty: What I’m hearing is, “I no longer want to say, “Not your will, but mine be done.” I want to say “Not my will, but Your will be done.” Because deep down inside of you, there is a part of you, that when the Lord would talk about giving over your will, would switch it around. You’d say, “Not Your will, but mine be done.” So, there’s that conflict. Ask the Lord to help you be conscious, when you go into that reversal, and choose your own will over His. Do you think God is going to ask too much of you? 

AM: No, I just don’t like going through the pain of dying to my will, but I still want to die to it. 

Betty: It will hurt. It’s not going to let up, until you’re healed. It’s part of your healing, namely the very hurts you’re feeling. Anything in you that wants anything out of God’s will is going to have to change. It’s gonna have to hurt. You’ll reach a point at which it hurts less, because you want what God wants rather than what you want. But, as long as you’re in a place where you want what you want, rather than what God wants, then you’ll have pain. It’s the pain of the self that is not pleased, because it’s not getting its will done. It’s not easy to make the choice for “Not my will, but Thine be done.” 

We have to be able to live aware that we’re not always going to get our way. We need to get to a point where that’s okay, and to accept that God’s way is what we want.