Appearances are so deceiving. One minute someone is devoted, loving, caring, present and desirous... the next, running the opposite direction as fast as their feet will carry them. I left myself wide open. Hoodwinked, fooled, tricked and broken. I trusted and I was disappointed. I can't even begin to describe the crushing blow to the heart, mind and self-confidence... and that was just a human.
When it comes to God, the water gets even murkier. He calls to a trust, a faith, a belief that requires something beyond the norm. The desire to throw myself into His arms and let His peace chase away all my fears and anxieties is overpowering and glittering in its possibilities of freedom of soul and spirit, but something holds me back. Glaring scars, reminders of falling so hard on an unforgiving pavement of reality of circumstances holds my heart in check. As if I was waiting for a lover to fail me again, I secretly wait for Him to not come through. My doubt feels heretical and at the same time I am blame myself while being unable to solve it. Stuck between the hard spot and the rock of life and spirit, I wait quietly for my salvation. I believe, help my unbelief.
How do you know something is God? We want to attribute every good thing, allowing it to somehow bolster our already weak and tormented faith, but every disappointment is somehow excused away. I just didn't understand the will of God, right? Simple enough, too simple it would seem. Thomas Merton said "If you find God easily, maybe it isn't God you are finding." Does He need me to make excuses for Him? If He does, what's the point?
So I stand confused and wondering, where is the faith of the child I should posses, as well as the wisdom of a serpent and why should I be asking? What does it mean to trust You, yet again, I ask.
I finally met someone who thinks as deeply as me, only they are an avid agnostic. Life is more about biological development. God may or may not be real. We are all a cosmic sort of chaos and purposelessness. It's so hard for me to talk to them. Everyday I face these questions, but also face the deep, heart wrenching hunger that keeps me bent and on my knees. If none of this is real, more of a fool than ever am I, but I throw my lots in and stake my claim on the belief that what is written, what I have to know, what I have to believe is real. My alternative, where my existence is so small and so insignificant, that every bad thing that happens is purely a moment of chaos, its more faith than I can muster to go there.
My heart is set on a God that loves me. My head is wrapped in the knowledge of a more perfect being and my hope is centered on a relationship between myself and an infinite being. Circumstantially, my heart settles as I realize there are some things I will never explain, know or understand and because of that I am happy.
Still, the murky waters exist as I struggle with this faith and its expression. It's hard to know that something can be so fulfilling and so requiring at the same time. I'm satisfied. Broken, but satisfied. I'm hurting, but breathing and smiling. Happy, but melancholy. I will never make excuses, pacifications or justifications for who or what I am. I'm happy to be me. As awful and wonderful as I am. In that though, I realize, I take a risk. I refuse to settle and because of it, it may be a lonely road.
A little more jaded, a little more cautious and a little more cynical, I realize with my most recent loss, the standards are higher and higher. I won't be fooled again. Once shame on me, twice shame on everyone else in the world. And to be honest, if anything, it's my faith that raises that bar.
I can't settle for just any job, any boyfriend, any friend, any place in this life. It's all wrapped in and around my faith and somehow that makes life a little less easy to just choke down. I can't just go with the flow and hope everything turns out. I want the best of the best. A career that is about this God I love; a love that is about this God I know. I trusted everything to just turn out once and I have that scar to remember, now I'm stuck knowing all I can do is trust an invisible source and pray His promises are more true than they have seemed.
There's a song I listen to all the time. One of the lines says "I'm hanging on another day, just to see what You throw my way." I know the feeling. My trust is remaining in my weakened state of faith a fresh face in a crowd of the guilty. I make no excuses. I make no justifications. I believe because I believe, but my selfishness tells me to demand the fulfillment of the promises He makes easily and frequently.
I am a created being, but in that state, I know my dependency. Lord, have mercy on Your clay. I am only what I am created into. I only have the faith You give me to have, the hope You in part and the belief You extend. Where else am I to go? Have mercy, great mercy on me Hosanna.
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