questions....etc........

Well….here I am…stuck in the mailroom yet again (but at least I have a job...right?). I’m working on recruit mailings and it’s not going so well. The machine is supposed to fold and stuff the letters into envelopes – but right now it’s only doing about 5 before it has a paper-jam. It’s seriously ruining the envelopes we printed off and it’s making me frustrated. But still – I know that even at this ‘slow’ rate – it’s still making more progress than I ever would. Still wish it would work right so I could finally finish this deal…but o well – more time in here means more time to write I guess (except for having to fix the paper-jam every 30 seconds….ok …here goes.

I have a lot on my heart and mind right now. I don’t really know what to do with it all – so I figured maybe I’d just lay it all out on the table. Maybe then I can get a better perspective on it all. I’ll probably cover a number of random topics – but try to hang with me (or not – whatever you want to do – doesn’t matter to me). The past couple of weeks everything’s kinda been out of control (or rather – feeling like it’s out of my control – which is ultimately probably the real issue – but for now – I’ll wait on that one). Yesterday it seemed everything just came to a head – and then I’m in a crisis – a semi-silent or internal crisis – but a crisis to me none the less. Anyways – yesterday was a flood – a flood of doubts, fears, emotion….gross….here’s the deal…..

I’ve never actually had a time of sincere doubt relating to God/faith/etc…let me explain better – I’ve never come to a point of doubting God’s existence. I’ve doubted His promises, trustworthy-ness, stuff like that – but have never sincerely doubted His existence. Yesterday I did – and it scared me. Again I think I have some more explaining to do. There are a couple of different ways to come to this doubt (in my mind) – either out of anger/frustration or out of fear – yesterday it wasn’t so much that I was mad at God and just decided to say – forget you – I don’t believe you’re worth any of this – it was different. All of a sudden I reached a breaking point I didn’t even know I was headed for. Anyways – I have just really felt beaten up and pushed down lately…tons of nightmares, pictures, pain – stuff like that…yesterday I was just real sad when I woke up – sadness that is heavy – ever experienced that before? About the middle of my day I finally just got hit with all this fear. I had been finding so many questions that I had I could not answer and that frustrated me. At first I was kinda angry because I feel like some of my questions I’ve been asking for a long time – with no clear answer if any at all. When I ask other people about this stuff they say “well, just pray about it and ask the Lord to show you….” – and then I’m back to frustration – feeling like I have been asking and praying about this stuff for a while now…and…nothing. Anyways – back to the fear – all of a sudden I was just hit by doubt. These questions that I didn’t want to be considering or having at all….like….Maybe I wasn’t hearing anything and struggling because God really wasn’t there – maybe I’d been wrong for 17years. What if God doesn’t exist? It wasn’t that I was mad – all of a sudden I was just scared. All of these thoughts like – being afraid of being alone, hurting because you feel alone, and being confronted with the possibility that your “alone-ness” could be real….each of those are very different. I think I’m starting to talk in circles – but I’m going to try to fix that.

Anyways – my doubt of God’s existence changed. I mean, I started to realize that that probably wasn’t’ what I was afraid of. I think I was more afraid that he DID exist and that he had simply left me or rejected me. I know my attitude as of late has been horrible. There are things I want to be different but just can’t seem to change on my own. I’m angry and controlling, and prideful…and scared. And what if He just decided to give up on me? I don’t want to be separated from him – in one sense it would be easier to find out that he doesn’t exist that the he does and just doesn’t want to have anything to do with me anymore. I about lost it- I was just overwhelmed by sadness. Hopeless. I just wanted to die – and not in that depressed suicidal my life sucks kinda way – but just the sickening feeling of hopeless loss – the idea of being separated from God (more because of my disobedience than His “possible” frustration and abandonment of me) just made me want to curl up and die. I had a lot of time to think last night and had sort of a scary prayer time. It was scary because I hadn’t prayed this way in years – I told God I didn’t know how I was going to get out of bed or out of my apt in the morning – not knowing what to do – not wanting to live with things like they are. I don’t know – don’t get all worried and think I’m crazy or suicidal or anything like that (that’s all I’d need to add to this mess) well – I guess you can think I’m crazy – that’s ok – I’ve wondered about it a lot myself – just not the other part…but anyways…the thing is…this idea of possible separation – I know it’s gotta be my fault. I know there are things I need to pray about and issues that I need to let go of – but I don’t now how to. It’s not that I don’t want to do it – it’s that I don’t know how…and if I do have an idea about the technical ‘how’ – I’m afraid I’ve heard wrong. I want to question it all – and not move forward until I’m sure where to go from here (if that makes any sense).

My arrogance – ugh. I’m sick of it. I think of all I willfully withhold from God…areas I refuse to trust him in…action I delay because of doubt. All of this…it literally makes me sick to think of it. I owe so much…and if all of this is true…if God really hasn’t left me and continues to give me chance after chance – man am I horrible back to him. I know he deserves better than what I give him. There are times I know that my actions are probably hurting him and I don’t care because I’m hurting and just expect him to heal it all. I expect things that I don’t deserve…and even when I get them I’m not thankful. I’m an ungrateful child and I know that if he really is my father…that it hurts him. And now I don’t know what to do about it. I’m afraid to say anything about it – I’m afraid to try and fix the relationship. If God is who he says he is…if his promises are true (and I know he is and they are – in my head mainly – and some but not enough I my heart)…then I’ve hurt him and I’m ashamed of that…and in my head I can only imagine that he’d be real pissed off with me. He has every right to be. What if I confess and ask for forgiveness and he turns his back on me anyways? What if I’ve done too much to ever get the chance to be close to him? What if? It’s easier to continue to try and stay hard-hearted and pretend I don’t care about my actions…but I do. Is any of this making sense?

Someone said something the other day about falling in love with God…it makes me ask…is that possible? And with all I’ve done…could he ever fall in love with me? I guess I see my relationship with God thru the lens of my broken relationships with men. I think – if I allow myself to fall in love…with anyone…I’m allowing them the ability to hurt me. And then questions like – how do I fall in love with someone I’m not sure can stand me (God). I can hardly stand myself most days. And sometimes I just want to say – God – don’t love me…because I will hurt you and I don’t want to do that…but that’s how I am. Stupid as that probably sounds….it’s what I think a lot of times. Caring and softening my heart within the ‘relationship’ (though it seems really broken right now) causes me to care…care so deeply it hurts when I can’t find a way back or a way out of my self – my own sin. I don’t want to be like this. I don’t know where to go from here. I’m sure to most people I seem real defiant and angry and ungrateful and a lot of the time that’s very true…but not always. I don’t like being this way….but sometimes it feels safer to be angry and hard. I’m afraid I’ll fall apart if I soften.

And I’m afraid of the unknown. I guess this comes back to a discussion from earlier this week – me and the question ‘why’….. I seem to ask it more and more. It’s become less of an appropriately placed question and more of an obsession – sometimes I just ask like something that I just say all the time without really thinking about it – and other times it’s just this obsession to know things. Although – obsession is not necessarily a foreign topic to me….it was in my past and likes to come back and get me sometimes – and right now – I’m in one of those ‘sometimes’ (gotta love ocd) – one more thing to add to my list….moving on…..

Anyways – about the ‘why’ question…it’s been brought up to me over and over that I need to just trust. Trust and obey. Most of the time I’ll ask ‘why’ before I follow thru with something I’ve been asked to do. It’s not necessarily that I refuse to do it – I just want to know why I’m doing the things I’m doing. I guess on the other hand – I ask so I can judge for myself the ‘worth’ of what is being asked of me. I want to be able to understand the meaning behind it – it has to be logical. At the same time – I know that God doesn’t work in my world of logic and that it really shouldn’t matter if something makes sense to me or not. But I’m not there yet. The attitude of “just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it” – I want to want to have that attitude enough to do whatever it takes. Did you follow that? I almost couldn’t….but anyways….i want to trust God with what he’s doing. It’s weird to me that I struggle with it – because most of the time I’d agree with the fact that I don’t know what’s best for me. But maybe this is a dead topic – beaten into the ground…I don’t know. All that is to say – I get angry when people won’t answer my ‘why’ question – in my prideful heart I think – you owe me an explanation if you expect me to do ‘this’ or ‘that’ for you. But really – they don’t owe me anything – and neither does God. Sometimes it makes me sick to think that I would try to demand that from him. Ugh….

It’s funny – I read someone’s blog which talked about living in extremes. This also related to the questions I have. I am a person of extremes as well. I can never seem to find any middle ground in life, with people, with myself….i went from being afraid to question anything to asking too frequently, from feeling incompetent when I had a question to feeling stupid if I didn’t ask, from non-action because I didn’t have all the information to non-action because I doubt the information I have. All in all – neither is right or better – neither is getting me where I want to go. Extremes – all or nothing – and I think most of the time I live in the land of the ‘nothing.’ I don’t want to live here anymore…but the middle-ground seems like a pipedream…it can’t be possible. All or nothing is simple…and yet I’m sure it’s also restrictive and stops many good possibilities. Failure is usually my end point. I feel I’ve failed at my relationships with God, people, family…and I’m afraid it’s all over – no chance of a re-do or restoration. I don’t want to believe that’s true…I can’t let myself because it’s like a cop-out. Sometimes I think second-chances are for weak people that couldn’t do it right the first time – given to people others feel sorry for. That’s how I think (but when I give them to other people I don’t think that about them…) I don’t know…maybe I should end this blog…it’s really long and I’m not sure I’m making any forward motion any more. I have more to say I’m sure – but for now I’ll spare you more frustrating repetition. As always….thoughts?
jc