Our Nature to Struggle, Doubt, & Trust

**Disclaimer: This piece was written pre-deconstruction of religious beliefs and faith system. Many of these beliefs inform the sentiments of the writing and are not in alignment with my values. As this is a part of my journey and an extensive blog over years, I have chosen not to remove a majority of my posts written on faith. Please as a reader, take this into consideration and take what works for you, leave what does not. I also apologize for any harm my words from this past perspective may cause to any readers.**

Sometimes peace is a choice - a destination you set course toward. My therapist told me this week, "you were doing so good," as if to say "What happened?"

She told me I'd found the right things to put me on a good path before, and I just need to return to those things. I felt a little confused from an emotional mini-whirlwind the last week or so - what did I do before that to be on a good path, in a good place?

Today at church it hit me, or God did with the truth: I lost my footing in an instant. I think of when Peter is initially trusting Jesus, he successfully walks on water - for like a hot second. Then when he sees what's happening, he loses focus on the trust and starts to sink. See, I like Peter because God starts the church through him, but he's kind of a dink sometimes. A real putz. It just goes to show, you could have the real, in-the-flesh Jesus doing miracles and stuff in front of you, and still have the struggles. It's in our nature to doubt.

I didn't lose my footing from anything so impressive as walking on water, but it's been a long and tumultuous time of weirdness in my faith. And I realized just this week, I'm still having trouble feeling close to God not because He's far away, but because I went through so much pain that I don't understand and I don't know quite how to recover from. Sure, the appointment before last I went to my therapist and thought, I don't really need to be here, I'm pretty okay. I felt finally normal again.

The truth of it is, I am still struggling to trust God after I feel like He let me down. But He tells us in so many places - today in my heart - that we need to trust Him, not our own understanding.

However, I've found the church doesn't have much to offer people who are trying to trust God in the midst or the wake of great pain. Words don't really do much to that feeling in you that's pretty damn undeniable; kinda feels like, "my life hurts right now." You can't just throw a 'God loves you' at that, because those words only do so much against certain levels of pain. They're not unimportant, but they're not always helpful. There is something to be said for the steadiness of it, though. When you rejoice; set yourself back on the facts of God's loving-kindness and trustworthiness, even if that feels hollow.

So this morning as my heart swelled in worship, thinking of the places in the lives of my friends that I trust God to work, the weight of my own situation crept in. And in His gentleness, He didn't give me any answers, but He reminded me that I can only be satisfied in Him. He reminded me that I cannot be at peace without trusting in His loving-kindness - and that that is a choice. I can't make sense out of loving someone deeply and being parted from them for reasons that my big God should be able to handle, but I can move forward in trust. That trust may feel weak, and the peace may feel weary, but it's less weak and weary than waiting for answers without Him. Because I think that longing for God is in our nature, too.

A year ago today

I didn't know it at the time, but it was a year ago today that it all started to become confusing. I came back to a relationship believing God explicitly led me there, the possibility and purpose of which I no longer expect to ever understand. I think I've let go of that because there isn't the same pain to it. It's got the dulling ache of a once broken bone, or the tenderness of a scarred wound. I've now come to terms with the fact that I survived the feeling I was certain and fearful would break me. I don't love it, but it is a part of my story now: having loved deeply and lost painfully.

A year ago I wasn't thinking much about the risk of all the pain that inevitably made its temporary home in my life. I'd spent so long regretting taking that step back into the relationship, but I don't anymore. Cliche as it sounds, to love was worth it, the risk of my very life. I learned afresh that in my darkest valleys, still I am not alone. I learned that in my lowest weakness, there is a strength that endures which sustains me – it's my own.

Still I may - or likely will, in my humanness - forget such impacting lessons. Time will continue to press on, and things like anniversaries of dates will come to remind me, putting that weird little flutter of bittersweet remembrance in my heart. I'll otherwise remember today as the day I watched baseball with someone I loved.

Might

Occasionally you might cross paths with someone whom you can appreciate and whom you feel as though you know, because their heart has been broken and their life rifled through by pain. You might stop at that crossroads of your meeting and revel in the brief, sweet company of a fellow enduring soul. And Traveler, that might be it.

Stitch Me Up

I got what I need,
there's no reason for me to bleed,
so can you stitch me up please?
I'm tired of falling apart
- tired of feeling this aching heart
if only
there was a way
to rewind
and erase it all from my mind
so it'd stop replaying
and stop relaying
- bringing it back
and throwing me off track
when trying to move forward
without you
is enough
with our memories
thick about me
as the air I breathe
so much time spent wondering
only in reprieve
when you'll bid me
a farewell I can believe.

That Once Brewed Quietly

When you get to breathing easy and laughing again, life throws you another one...

It's been a difficult, strange year, and I can't help but think the me before all that's happened would've been more chipper and resilient, but at this point I'm just so tired. Tired of feeling second string, - or like having feelings is some horrendous burden to bear. I'd say "I'm sorry" for being a feeler, but I'm not and I don't know how to be any other way.

And I feel so far away from everyone. Another cyclical, seasonal thing I go through - in tandem, usually, with my spiritual deserts - whose repetition I can never seem to figure out. I find myself in that place with little hope that I'll ever stop having these seasons, knowing in part this round is due to re-entry to the single life. I don't have much hope for it to feel different, the only hope I do have is that God will grow something in me through it. That maybe somehow in being parched for the very thing I crave and need most, I will find that quenched in Him, even though it doesn't feel like it right now.

I naively felt as though I already knew my low seasons in life many years ago. I don't say naively because they weren't low, but because I believed probably out of self-preservation that more would not come; I'd hit the quota. Somehow in that I felt brave, to endure and be strong. However, this year has broken many of my constructs about what I can endure, and what I want, and even what I already have. It has near evaporated the hope that once brewed quietly, a slow-rolling boil.

So as I have finally picked myself up and dusted myself off, I am tired, and faint, and lonely, with only the hope that my Refuge will come to me, lift me from my weariness, and set things right. Even though the hope is weary. 

Slack: Never So Steady

**Disclaimer: This piece was written pre-deconstruction of religious beliefs and faith system. Many of these beliefs inform the sentiments of the writing and are not in alignment with my values. As this is a part of my journey and an extensive blog over years, I have chosen not to remove a majority of my posts written on faith. Please as a reader, take this into consideration and take what works for you, leave what does not. I also apologize for any harm my words from this past perspective may cause to any readers.**

I have books piling on the empty side of my full-sized bed. Most of them books about feelings stuff and relationships, one about overcoming, two journals, and several folded bulletins covered in sermon notes (the ones with an asterisk are things my pastor said that particularly struck me). And my bible, the small one that I bought to take with me on my six-month mission trip five years ago.

Five years ago this summer, I was on a mission trip having the time of my life, dodging cockroaches and motorbikes like a native, and feeling like God was in everything, great and small. I actually woke up early to read my bible in the morning - me! I was fearless and I was on fire. Eleven years ago this summer, I was on a mission trip in Appalachia when I "came to Jesus", as they say. A year ago this summer, I was nervously choking out the words "I love you" to a man.

Seasons roll over us recklessly like waves do in the ocean, complete disregard for you in their path. Here I am in the path as the waves roll over me. I don't really know what this season is, - maybe low tide? Instead of relishing in God's goodness to me, or seeing it all over the world, my heart is weary, and I feel like I see Him almost nowhere. It's strange because I haven't stopped believing what I do, but it just doesn't feel very impacting against the raging world, and the pain in my own heart and my own back yard. It feels like God is being quiet. And that doesn't make me much want to pick up the bible next to me in my bed.

Very in line with the metaphor, I have found that seasons like this in my life ebb and flow, although it feels one was never so steady as this. A thing happens with tides between the high and the low, the current has to slow to change directions (forgive me if I butchered it, I'm not sciency, I'm feely). This is a period called slack water, when it is calm and quiet. I can't say I'm in the calm and quiet of life, but certainly a calm and quiet of my faith. My hope is that this is something like the changing of the tides, this quietness.

A favorite author, speaker, thinker, teacher of mine, Graham Cooke talks about how we have seasons of manifestation and conversely, hiddenness. Times when we feel like we are running hand-in-hand with God and seeing His glory in the land of the living, and then there's times when we feel like we don't know where God went but He sure isn't with us. Cooke says that's when God is growing things in you and moving unbeknownst to you. That has been my little seed of hope that even though things feel completely stagnant, God is at work.

And surely He must be; surely the tides must soon turn. I guess that's one thing an ebb and flow ensures: one must always be followed by the other.

Crash

One weak, coaxed sentence,
two words
ones I
told you
to tell me
- wanted you to sell me,
but you lacked in presence
then pleaded your innocence
never pulling up
seemingly embracing
the crash and burn.