Just Thinking

I'm tired this morning, maybe a little cranky, but that seems to have been the norm for the past couple weeks. Sleep has not come easily, and one complete night, sans nightmares, that happened 27 days ago isn't cutting it. I feel a little bit like I've been bombarded by a whole range of things, especially by emotions, and they're exhausting me. The way my emotions change right now frustrates me. In one moment I can be peaceful, fulfilled, and in the next neurotic and insecure. And I feel like I have no control over these things - that I can't control my spastic emotions. And I'm questioning if I really wanted to start to feel things again anyway.

Some random thoughts for the morning, before I head to work:

• I wrestle with the ideas surrounding the reality of spiritual warfare. This concept was so absent from my knowledge of the world growing up. I've been introduced to it in the last couple years, and it has been an occasionally terrifying introduction. Most of the time it boggles my mind. I have a couple good friends who "see" spiritual realities quite easily. They pray, and God reveals it to them. And they revel in the opportunity to engage in the battle for the lives of people we know. I sit sometimes, with them, as we're praying for someone, and just think, "how can you be excited by this? This kind of reality just terrifies me, and leaves me feeling so uneasy, so unsettled." I experienced this set of emotions again last night, as we prayed for a friend. I'll be quite honest and say that I trust their discernment, but that it scares me a little to see the reality of spiritual attack etc. in the lives of people who are believers in Christ. (p.s. James or Stu, if you read this, know that some of these questions are coming your way in the very near future! As my resident I don't quite get this one and it scares me advisors!)
• I met a girl last night at church. Her mom was a pastor too. So, we're chatting, sitting in the pub after church and hanging out, and she asks me, "So, did you like being a pastor's kid?" And I stalled, which should tell you a lot. "Did you?" I asked. When she said no, I was so relieved. I gotta tell you, I hated it most of the time. I would never ask my dad to be anything but what God has called him to be, but it didn't have a very good effect on my life, and it scares me to think of God calling me into ministry - I don't want that lifestyle for my own children, but don't quite know that I could protect them from it. Anyway, this girl and I had a great chat, trading a few "war stories" - we both had quite a few. I really enjoyed meeting her. Mmm... was so good.
• I'm frustrated with being sick. I've been sick off and on since the beginning of October, when we started renovations on our house. And I'm tired of feeling kind of rotten all the time. This stupid cold - I'm not sick enough to miss school or work anymore, but just sick enough to feel kind of miserable and exhausted and cranky while I go to work and school. Not exactly the way to foster attention to my lectures, or to foster a positive attitude towards my job, coworkers and clients.
• I feel a bit like God is getting farther away again, and I'm battling the typical Christian "guilt reaction." Well, I haven't been very good about reading scripture, or praying. Which is true, to some extent. But, the farther I move from that crazy night at the beginning of the month when God stepped into my life, the more the depression and exhaustion are beginning to regrip my life. And I'm still frustrated.
• I feel jealous of friends who are making progress in dealing with their stuff. Who are making strides instead of my occasional one-step-forward-two-steps-back routine. Is it okay to be jealous of the way God is working in someone else's life, when I feel like He's slowly disappearing from mine again?
• And yet, I know he's there, in the unexplainable pit of my gut type way of knowing. He has asked me to care for others in new ways these last weeks. My love of writing has been reignited, and he has given me things to write about. I see him in the friends encouraging me to press on. In the encouraging email I got from a friend who I'd been thinking about all week, but hadn't had time to contact. In the chance I had to chat with two junior high girls at my dad's church yesterday about boys, to tell them not to rush, that I was 22 and had never had a boyfriend, had never been kissed, and that was okay. In meeting a new friend and trading PK war stories. In an afternoon spent at a movie about the life of Johnny Cash. In the smiles on friends faces. In the God stories shared at church last night (even though I missed most of them). He's there, somewhere, in a misty, transitory way. And I long for the day when it won't be misty and transitory anymore.