"Listening to God is one of the most underwhelming, difficult, unfulfilling, confusing, and altogether frustrating experiences of my life."
A friend of mine wrote this sentence on his journal at our church website today. And it grabbed me when I sat down to read the entry tonight.
Because this is how I have felt lately. This is how I felt today.
This afternoon was one of the most stunning crisis moments yet. Everytime I think that things with this friend cannot possibly get worse, they seem to get astronomically worse. And I am left wondering if God maybe said the wrong name when He called me to serve her. If possibly God got confused and meant to appoint someone with age, wisdom and experience.
And so I sit there, and listen to her, and wonder what could possibly be the reason that I am being asked to do this. And God is stunningly silent. I listen to her, and I pray silently, begging him to take control of my lips as I begin to respond to the crisis. I don't know if He does - sometimes it feels like it. Sometimes there are insights that become suddenly clear, and I know that I need to share them. And sometimes, I just talk - practical common sense kind of things, and hope that those are God too.
And if positive steps are made while we talk, then the credit certainly belongs to God. Because who am I anyway? I'm twenty-two. I spent the last several years battling depression, nightmares, and emotional and spiritual issues. I have a degree in European history that hardly qualifies me to give sound insight on matters of physical, mental, emotional or spiritual health. On November 1, 2005, I met God in a more powerful and personal way than anything I've ever experienced, and my life has been a gong show ever since. He called me once again to serve, and it's been nuts. I've put out one fire after another. He's ripped open wounds in my life that I have no idea what to do with. I find myself on the brink of tears on a nearly daily basis as I think about these wounds - this from the girl who hasn't been able to cry in well over a year. I'm having weird dreams every night again - dreams that seem somehow significant, but for reasons I can't quite peg. I don't usually remember them, I just wake feeling restless and unsettled - a feeling that takes a couple hours to fight into submission. And yet, in the pit of my gut, I know I can't leave - ever. Because He's there, and He's doing crazy things, and I'm astonished every day that He's there. Wow!
But the fact remains that listening to Him is, well, all the things my friend named. And another friend swears to me that it will get better, get easier, and I hope he's right, because this is just crazy hard at the moment, and I could really use the "direct voice of God" in some of the wounds of my life, and in these crisis moments that I'm dealing with on such a regular basis.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Muddled, but gearing up
I've had three days off work this week. This is day three. The goal for the days was to rest and recuperate. I may have accomplished this.
At the present moment I'm gearing up. Today this means I am mentally preparing myself for some challenges, while eating multi-grain toast slathered with butter and strawberry jam. (Just as an aside - I don't quite understand multi-grain bread. To me, the concept of bread is something soft and delicious - multi-grain bread with bird-seed like stuff in it is just not quite there. But it's edible. It just won't ever measure up to a crispy warm loaf of white french bread. Plus, strawberry jam is definitely a second rate option next to raspberry, which we seem to be out of again.)
In a couple of hours, my friend who's mother is dying will come over. I'm a little scared for that conversation. I think things are going pretty badly for her. A couple days ago she started refusing to tell me what was going on over the phone - saying she'd tell me when she saw me. That always scares me with this particular friend. When I'm done posting, I'm going to crawl into my bed, turn on some David Crowder Band, do a little reading and a lot of praying to prepare myself for whatever comes next in this one.
After I meet with that friend, I'm spending the evening at a movie with another friend. I've known this one since I was six, but she's one of those friends who you have to "do" something with. You can't just sit down and have a conversation. It always makes me a little sad to spend time with her, because I see hurt in her life, but don't know how to touch it, have never been able to draw honesty or feeling from her. And as our relationship changed in university, I stopped sharing too. Oh, we'll cover the basics - what our families are up to, is there a guy in either of our lives, plans for the next while, but I'll come home, and it will still feel empty, and sad - the promise for so much more is there, but we can't seem to find it.
I go back to working full time tomorrow. I'm hoping for the best. I don't particularly love my job, but at the moment I don't hate it either. This next month will be filled with consultations - every bride getting married in the spring and summer wedding rush will be needing to set up gift registries, and my job is to ensure that the registry they create suits their needs and their guests budgets.
I'm still muddled. Still praying single word sentences. Someone suggested I might pray the word Grace - it's a good word. I've been praying a prayer Brennan Manning suggested in a sermon I listened to recently - "Abba, I am Yours." I'm trying to rest in that statement. To live there as I deal with some incredibly painful things that God has brought to light in my life. I feel like I'm thrashing, working hard to grab solid ground that isn't quite in reach. But I'm going to keep going. Because nothing in the previous years hurt this much - not the depression, not the numbing overwhelming struggle, but nothing felt like that moment of clarity when God reveals something, when He promises to begin a new work in your life, when He opens a wound but promises to heal it properly if I will only wait and allow Him to work. So, I'm clinging for dear life, treading water, whatever metaphor you want to use, but I'm never going back!
At the present moment I'm gearing up. Today this means I am mentally preparing myself for some challenges, while eating multi-grain toast slathered with butter and strawberry jam. (Just as an aside - I don't quite understand multi-grain bread. To me, the concept of bread is something soft and delicious - multi-grain bread with bird-seed like stuff in it is just not quite there. But it's edible. It just won't ever measure up to a crispy warm loaf of white french bread. Plus, strawberry jam is definitely a second rate option next to raspberry, which we seem to be out of again.)
In a couple of hours, my friend who's mother is dying will come over. I'm a little scared for that conversation. I think things are going pretty badly for her. A couple days ago she started refusing to tell me what was going on over the phone - saying she'd tell me when she saw me. That always scares me with this particular friend. When I'm done posting, I'm going to crawl into my bed, turn on some David Crowder Band, do a little reading and a lot of praying to prepare myself for whatever comes next in this one.
After I meet with that friend, I'm spending the evening at a movie with another friend. I've known this one since I was six, but she's one of those friends who you have to "do" something with. You can't just sit down and have a conversation. It always makes me a little sad to spend time with her, because I see hurt in her life, but don't know how to touch it, have never been able to draw honesty or feeling from her. And as our relationship changed in university, I stopped sharing too. Oh, we'll cover the basics - what our families are up to, is there a guy in either of our lives, plans for the next while, but I'll come home, and it will still feel empty, and sad - the promise for so much more is there, but we can't seem to find it.
I go back to working full time tomorrow. I'm hoping for the best. I don't particularly love my job, but at the moment I don't hate it either. This next month will be filled with consultations - every bride getting married in the spring and summer wedding rush will be needing to set up gift registries, and my job is to ensure that the registry they create suits their needs and their guests budgets.
I'm still muddled. Still praying single word sentences. Someone suggested I might pray the word Grace - it's a good word. I've been praying a prayer Brennan Manning suggested in a sermon I listened to recently - "Abba, I am Yours." I'm trying to rest in that statement. To live there as I deal with some incredibly painful things that God has brought to light in my life. I feel like I'm thrashing, working hard to grab solid ground that isn't quite in reach. But I'm going to keep going. Because nothing in the previous years hurt this much - not the depression, not the numbing overwhelming struggle, but nothing felt like that moment of clarity when God reveals something, when He promises to begin a new work in your life, when He opens a wound but promises to heal it properly if I will only wait and allow Him to work. So, I'm clinging for dear life, treading water, whatever metaphor you want to use, but I'm never going back!
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