'I Have Given Myself Clear Away'

Rolled out of bed in internal haste today. Rereading this brought me back to liberated, soul-sighing sanity. My life is not my own. Nothing to prove, nothing to achieve. No life circumstance requires savvy manipulation. He is sorting it all out.

Jonathan Edwards' diary, 1723:

Saturday, January 12. In the morning I have been before God; and have given myself, all that I am and have, to God, so that I am not in any respect my own: I can challenge no right in myself, I can challenge no right in this understanding, this will, these affections that are in me; neither have I any right to this body, or any of its members: no right to this tongue, these hands, nor feet; no right to these senses, these eyes, these ears, this smell or taste.

I have given myself clear away, and have not retained anything as my own. I have been to God this morning, and told him that I gave myself wholly to him. I have given every power to him; so that for the future I will challenge no right in myself, in any respect. I have expressly promised him, and do now promise almighty God, that by his grace I will not.

I have this morning told him, that I did take him for my whole portion and felicity, looking on nothing else as any part of my happiness, nor acting as if it were. . . .

This I have done.

And I pray God, for the sake of Christ, to look upon it as a self-dedication; and to receive me now as entirely his own, and deal with me in all respects as such; whether he afflicts me or prospers me, or whatever he pleases to do with me, who am his.

--Letters and Personal Writings, in Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 16, pp. 760-63