Learning

The key to living life, the key to knowing the deepest wells of hope and joy, are not found when all is well: they are found when we trust when all goes wrong.

May all our wells run deep.

It is unavoidable. We are going to suffer. We are going to be obedient and things are going to go wrong. We are going to do exactly what god tells us to do and its not going to end up like we want it to. But the question you are going to have to answer, not with your mind but with your heart, is do you trust Him. At the core of who you are, do you think God is good or do you think that He is evil? Do you own the faith that would say "if this goes wrong," for the rest of my life I believe that He is good. Because the answer and foundation of real life, the kind of life that leaves existence behind and becomes all that God created us to walk in, is not found in wealth and comfort but in trust and faith.

When is the last time you went to church and someone told you that sometimes life sucks?

Ahh, that our wells would go deep, that our hearts could trust Him, even when it all goes wrong. The only other option is to rail against Him.

Some of us have bought into some really crazy thoughts that, because things have gone wrong for us, we've obviously angered God or that we've sinned somehow and this is why God's doing this to us. If you are caught in that trap, you run from God instead of run to Him.

--Matt Chandler

Me: When God teaches me a lesson, it doesn't come quietly or slowly. He slams me in the face.

Why must God continually prove himself to me? Why can't I retain and practice the lesson I have been slammed with over and over?

Why do I constantly rely on my plans, instead of God's, while fully knowing that nothing I put into place will come to fulfillment without His will, influence, and power? Why does He keep working on me, even when I am an unceasing disappointment?

I do not deserve anything, much less the love of an enormous God who loves and cherishes me regardless of: the pastiness of my skin or the number of pimples on my face or the fact that I constantly question Him about my future husband and why I cannot seem to find him or my neverending worries about my family or my inability to say no to people even when I'm beyond exhaustion or my utter lack of faith in ever finding a cure or my insatiable thirst to understand my life and how I can somehow save the world from self destructing, even though I completely comprehend that it already has been saved.

Whoa, listed almost all my insecurities in a nonchalant sorta way.

Back with my face in the dirt. Beginning life without certain constants I have been relying on for the past 10 months.

Back to a different beginning and excited about where it will lead.

just normalcy

Apparently my previous posts have left questions unanswered, and some of my adoring fans have quietly given advice on how to find those answers I just can't seem to find.

Everyday someone gives me a piece of advice, either needed and heeded or completely out of line. I don't deserve to be treated like a child who has no control over her physical and emotional well-being. I choose when and if to take my medicine. I decide where and when I go to the doctor. And no, this disease is not "all in my head."

No matter how much my parents and I want to believe this is true, positive thoughts will not cure me. And the comment "just thinking bright thoughts will make you feel better" is a big, stinky bag of bologna.

So, just don't do it. If someone in your life is going through a rough patch, just listen. Don't give advice. I promise they probably don't want to hear it... if they do, they will ask you.

And, for heaven's sake, do not tell someone who has just been diagnosed with cancer or some other form of disease that they "are being punished for unconfessed sin" in their lives. Unless it is a venereal disease, then maybe.

While we are on the topic of suffering... Jesus never promised believers that life would be easy and happy. The form of Christianity being sold today, at least out here in LBK, is that once you accept Christ, your life will alter completely and all the bad stuff will disappear. Partly true. Life does change completely. But bad stuff doesn't just become invisible.

And where, exactly, in the Bible does it say that unconfessed sin will bring about an incurable, painful disease? And where does it say that Christians have the right to judge others, fellow believers or nonbelievers, according to their unconfessed sins and previous life experiences? Anyone know? Care to enlighten me?

STRANGE: I find that my closest moments with God are when I can't move my legs to get out of bed in the morning, or when my stomach hurts so badly I can barely breathe. I've begun to notice that when I think my walk is the strongest it has ever been, a newer, tougher trial comes and knocks me back down to the ground.

Life just does not make sense sometimes, and you have to learn to roll with the punches.

I guess I'm rolling all over the place.

Moral: think before you speak to someone suffering.