real talk

Disclaimer: This is not to step on toes, hurt feelings, make anyone feel bad and all that jazz. I just felt like I had to express this to order my thoughts and realize what I was feeling. I would prefer that you DO NOT COMMENT. If you would like to pray for me though, feel free.

I'm starting to get a lil tired of people telling me what to do about my spiritual relationship, trying to tell me they are/have been through/know what's going on with me (even if that may be true). It's like how can you tell someone (me) what they should feel or how they feel about something. You can make suggestions but don't tell me that doing exactly what you did is going to make my situation turn out like yours. I'm realizing that if expect my walk to be any particular way other than as God designed it then I might be missing the point of whatever situations I find myself in. I'm sorry that I make things difficult for myself by constantly jumping from side to side and sometimes chilling on the fence, one foot in both pastures. I have my good and my bad days. This has been a bad/off week for me, but please by all means don't tell me what I need to do or (even worse) what I should be doing. If anything has become blatant to me it's that I need to get on up OUT of Atlanta for a while. My church is even a distraction and I hate that every time I go I have to fight previous emotional ties or just the fact that the acquaintances I have (except for small group and e cubed) are all tied to an entity that I want to be completely free of, and maybe even forget. I don't want to think about these things at church. I thought it was a sanctuary but I have no peace when I'm there. I feel like a poser too. I'm not feeling ANYTHING right now, not church, not school, not work, not anything. All I want to do is write and sleep. I probably write in my sleep. I just don't know it. I feel suffocated because everyone is telling me what to do about this or about this and the noise is so loud that I can't hear anything so I shut it ALL out. I'd rather hit my low point and actually FEEL something (I know that's a strong thing to seek) than continue to be surrounded by these padded walls and never encounter brutual reality. How will I ever figure out where the end of myself is if people keep trying to tell me who I am and who I should be? What's a breakthrough when there is no adversity to break through. I'm tired of this 'life' sugarcoated and misrepresented, Christianity idealized and intangible, unreachable. In my mind I walk a path that's un-trekable. Yes, Pastor you did point out to me that "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." I even wrote about what I experienced that night and it has helped me immensely in my practical life. I'm really going all 'carpe diem' on my adultness.

I don't know what it is but when I realized that my academic life was completely unsure that mechanism in my heart that was so eager to walk down the 'path God has for me' loosened and I began to hang on for dear life, like at any moment I would experience my own personal Katrina. It would be fair to say that right now I am QUITE disturbed and very upset. I think I hide my distress well, but I'm holding on by a very thin thin thin spider silk strand of faith. I'm trying to thank You (LORD) for everything in my life that you've done and are doing now. I know I can't get mad whenever I face adversity but then sometimes I'm like "bring it on",not that I want You to be tempted but because instead of yielding my 'life' and self to You I just flip the heck out and forget who I belong to. I use my 'old' life as a crutch to help me cope with the day-to-day. Instead of taking further time to ponder what's off (nearly everything), it's easier to go out with a homegirl, even if it's a random run to CVS or I get all hyped up for no reason when I really wish that I was capable of being hyped up about You. Wait, I won't say that because 'hype' is temporary. For once I'd like to experience what a deep rooted joy and peace is but as soon as I begin to seek that I feel an artificial sense of 'ok' and it's like cool, why bother?? Then 'why bother' expands to 'maybe 'need' is a strong word, I don't need you because I got this.' That's disturbing because how can the created exist independently of the Creator? It can't. It will wither and fade away, or maybe end up in a mental institution or physically dead. With my whims and indecision and indeterminance and lack of focus I've backed the Holy Spirit living within me into the ICU like it's been in a horrible car crash and is paralyzed and may need a heart transplant (which I know may not make sense). My God, my God I walked off a plank tonight, hand-in-hand with a friend. It's like my body (flesh, active physical me) is in a soundproof diorama of my environment and I(my mind, my heart) is looking into it and trying to flag my body down to say "no, don't step there! don't make that move" only I'm behind a two way mirror and it's still to bright on the inside of the diorama to reveal the observer (me) on the outer side. [Most of you will probably not get (at all) what I was trying to say with that metaphor because it's really weird, but the good thing is that this is not about whether or not you understand it or me.] I keep feeling like it may take a really low or dark point for me to really see God. In the meantime I feel like I'll just go insane dealing with the day-to-day realities and uncertainties of what society terms 'growing pains.' An onlooker might decide that what I'm experiencing is 'normal' whatever that means. Right now I have no interest in normal.... or even what other people have to say to me about this right now... or what you might think of me in this moment... or what you ever thought in the first place. I'm not there yet... wherever 'there' is.




Posted on 10.6.2006 at 3:55 AM