Meet the Bloggers; Corner Chair

A couple of days ago, I wrote about Stacy of Not a Desperate Housewife and her effort to display both HaloScan and Blogger comments. I saw on that blog today that she's also a participant in a fairly new group blog called Meet the Bloggers, which consists of interviews with bloggers. So far the four interviewers have interviewed each other plus two other bloggers.

One of the interviewees is Tina of Corner Chair, who writes about her journey from driven perfectionism as a minister and counselor, to a breakdown and two months in prison for a felony, to the slow rebuilding of her life by God's grace. It is powerful stuff. A sample from one of her early entries, "Being Recreated":

I’ve been doing some reading about brokenness and humility. Recently, someone suggested that I needed to be more humble. My first response was one of incredulity. How could I be more broken, more humbled? I felt like my life had been pulverized. I felt less than useless. I had squandered my purpose. God could no longer have a plan for me.

I had been an achiever. I was driven to produce and to perfection. Failure was unacceptable and yet I made choices that resulted in the loss of my position. I went way beyond disappointing people. I betrayed trust. I behaved in a manner that was despicable. The only thing I deserved was rejection and to live a life of despair. ...

I had lived a life so full of myself. I worked to earn approval from everyone—including God. I proclaimed a message to others that I hadn’t fully taken into my own life. I was willing to admit that I was imperfect. I didn’t like it, but God said he would even use a “cracked pot.” What he was doing now was grinding the pieces into powder.

I kept asking how I was going to put the pieces back together. At some level I hoped to return to life as I knew it. I imagined that the process of healing would result in a restoration, a giving back so that I could move past what had happened and get on with my life and living out my purpose for God.

God had, has, very different plans. There will be a restoring of sorts, but his greater desire is to recreate me. That means I have to give up control. That means I have to truly trust him. That means what was, won’t be again. That brings tears to my eyes right now because I really don’t know what that means, or how it will look. What I do know is that I think I’m coming to the place where I’m willing to accept it and to open myself fully to it.

Thanks to Meet the Bloggers for introducing me to Corner Chair. Both have been added to the BatesLine blogroll.