OCD Top Ten, Part 2

Top Ten Things I Like About My OCD:

1.        My alphabetized spice rack.  I love to see my spices all lined up in a neat row.  It only includes the glass McCormick spices (the plastic ones are shunned and placed in a cabinet).  It did throw me when they started changing the lid colors, and at first I replaced the new, black lids with the older, green ones.  Then I learned that the purpose of the lid change was to help you realize the age of your spices, so I allowed it.

2.       My rainbow, color-coded closet.  As with the spices, it just makes me happy to see such organization.  It takes little effort to keep up, and it makes coordination a snap!

3.       There is always something entertaining to do.  Compulsive counting can occupy hours of time.

4.       The dentist has never needed to grind my teeth down to make them even.  I’ve done that for him.  Not that they usually do that sort of thing on humans, but I recently saw a vet do that to some horses, and it didn’t look fun.

5.       I have an uncanny knack for locating anything the family needs, anywhere in the house, since I’ve memorized where it all belongs, and where it all is, plus usually the process it took to get there.

6.       I know where everyone has been, what they’ve done, and how much they’ve eaten, just by walking into the room.  It makes the children paranoid, and that’s fun.

7.       Certainly, I must have excellent powers of concentration to focus on one thing, to the exclusion of all others, for hours on end.

8.       It makes disciplining the children easier, because whining has no effect on obsessive-compulsive thinking.  Some things must be done, and the precious-moments eyes don’t work on me.

9.       The opportunity to conquer something bigger than me.  I may sound crazy, (but, hey, that’s an established fact anyway…) but there’s something wonderful about overcoming something that I had considered to be desperately hopeless.  Even when there’s a whole lot of failure involved in the process of succeeding.  And I’m not there yet.  I’m just learning that the journey often becomes more important than the destination.

10.   Finding the scandalous love of my Savior in the middle of my journey.  Because there is no way to conquer something bigger than yourself without learning to lean on the strength of the One bigger than your problems.  Sometimes I love my OCD simply because it forces me to my knees in desperation, to cry out, to listen to the call of my Father who loves me more than He loved His own life.

…Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud.  A new power is in operation.  The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death….Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life.  Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God!...It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself?  When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life.  With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!

This resurrection life you received from God is…adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?”  God’s Spirit touches our sprits and confirms who we really are.  We know who he is, and we know who we are:  Father and children.  And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance!

So, what do you think?  With God on our side like this, how can we lose?  If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us?...The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us….I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.  Romans 8(MSG)

Above all, beyond my disorders and pain, I am a daughter of the King!