Kicking and Screaming

The only way that I am possibly coming across calm and collected is because I have worn myself out from kicking and screaming. My list of "but, what if's?" seems inexhaustible. My once rhythmically spinning world has slowly come to a puttering stop. God, all the while, is watching me with hopeful eyes while I waver between relinquishing to or challenging His authority in my life. For the last week or so, I have been audibly asking the question, "But what if I don't like what God has for me?" I think I'm smart enough to jump-start this world of mine but I'm not sure how things will end. No matter how much wishful thinking I can conjure up, there's no guarantee that all will end well if I'm in charge of my own fate. C.S. Lewis eloquently describes this battle in his book, The Problem of Pain:
"If the first and lowest operation of pain shatters the illusion that all is well, the second shatters the illusion that what we have, whether good or bad in itself, is our own and enough for us. Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us. We 'have all we want' is a terrible saying when 'all' does not include God. We find God an interruption. As St. Augustine says somewhere, 'God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full—there's nowhere for Him to put it.' Or as a friend of mine said, 'We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it's there for emergencies but he hopes he'll never have to use it.' Now God, who has made us, knows what we are and that our happiness lies in Him. Yet we will not seek it in Him as long as He leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for. While what we call 'our own life' remains agreeable we will not surrender it to Him. What then can God do in our interests but make 'our own life' less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible source of false happiness?...I call this Divine humility because it is a poor thing to strike our colours to God when the ship is going down under us; a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up 'our own' when it is no longer worth keeping. If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had."
In between my temper tantrums the last week I have been unusually still. I have been allowing the pain to settle in and do its thing. Pain is here to tell me something. If nothing else, pain is here waiting for a specific piece of me to die – to welcome healing and regrowth to the rest of me.