Thursday, July 17, 2008

Let's shed some light.

Last night I think I finally broke. Something happened anyway. I tried to go to my Algebra class and dissolved into tears. After that I ran a few errands afraid to go home and be alone. Finally I ended up there and tried to take a nap. That also incited tears. I decided to go outside and take some pastels and some sketching paper and draw a few things. I ended up with a couple of mediocre pictures then curled myself into a tiny ball on a camping chair and dozed. The wind was getting cool, it was almost nine o clock but I had found some sort of peace in my body. I was wearing a t-shirt and corduroy pants, (yes in July) but still felt cold. I relaxed little increments at a time and let my mind drift as the breeze teased along the bare skin of my lower back. I've been spending a lot of time thinking and more time than I care to admit on my face in supplication. I've asked over and over for some understanding as to why everything has to happen at once. Last night I picked up my Bible, with which I have had a tenuous relationship for most of my life and found a few things that comforted me. (Some of those Psalms are vicious!) I thought about the reasons why I've never felt content in a church, about how I feel that Christians are the biggest problem with Christianity, and that there are so many outdated things that cripple people in their faith. These are my opinions so by all means leave now if you're offended. In every church I have ever been to I have been hurt. A man at my first church chased me around in the basement intent on doing God knows what to me. I hadn't thought about that in awhile but it was actually pretty scary. I'm lucky I had friends with me. The people in the churches I've been to here in Springfield have been harmful in different ways. My family has had money stolen from them (over five thousand dollars), I have been used and then told that I wasn't wanted anymore ( my belief is because I was super quiet and shy in some ways and people thought that I was unapproachable), I have been told that any personal problems I've had have been because of my relationship with God. We've been pretty much ruined financially because of a family....well that's a loooonnngggg story. The things just stack up and up and I can't believe how awful we are to one another. We hurt each other and then sit back in our faith like it's this big easy chair. I thought at one time that faith should be used as a guideline, I know now that isn't completely what I mean. I feel that faith shouldn't be a list of things you should and should not do. Faith in whatever religion, if you're wholly into it, should be like breathing. You don't do those things you should do because you should do them you do them because you want to. If you can't be good to people, well, religion is kind of a people business. I just feel that God had become like, “GOD”, cold, unapproachable, someone who reprimands and admonishes, when a relationship with God should be far more intimate. They say that the Devil is in the details but for me God is. God was in that evening that I lay outside to take a nap. Or in the brilliance of a summer flower. Or occasionally when the sun pops through on an overcast day I think that's God. God is so encompassing and we only allow him into little bits and pieces of our lives because we think that's where he belongs. Maybe he should stay in church with the faithful who come every Sunday. Maybe he shouldn't give someone like me a chance because I've decided that to have faith in people is foolish. I've decided that I don't want someone else to keep me accountable when they have the same flaws and weaknesses I do. People are non stop judging one another. All people. They are constantly keeping a tally of the pros and cons deciding what it is about you that makes the grade. Sometimes it's subconscious most of the time isn't. Like I said, I have been broken recently, thoroughly and completely. I read those Psalms and there are so many people who cry out to God, in so much pain. They feel that he isn't there or isn't answering them. I've been there for awhile. I call it the pit of despair. I'm becoming way too familiar with it. (It has two Startbucks'.) I can't tell you the amount of pain that has bubbled up in the past few weeks. Things that I've never had the chance to deal with are now falling down around my ears with all of the other debris that is my life. Right now I have this chance to become something I never thought I would ever be. I don't really know what the end product is but I have a vague idea and I'm excited. There is so much life to be lived. I'm just on a journey to be whole in myself. I am by no means an ideal Christian and actually I don't want to be. This is my brand of faith and it's keeping me from killing myself, which at this point is a miracle. My brain is ready to implode but I keep finding pieces of myself every day. Strengths and weaknesses I didn't realize that I had before. I can feel God now at least. Can't hear him yet but if someone's not talking to you everyone knows that you just have to keep talking eventually they'll give in.

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