I now reside in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas, with my only community being my family and small church body. Life is different than it once was. At times, everything inside of me wants to run back to the life I once knew - the busyness, the authority, the constant change, the beautiful people, the great unknown.
I now live among the all-too-familiar. I earn my living by cleaning house and hanging out with an elderly lady. I feel weird about her paying me just to ease her loneliness, but I'm thankful for the $40 I earn each week.
I now cook for my family on a regular basis, which is rarely successful because I make things like tandoori chicken, steamed baby artichokes and lentils topped with caramelized onions, to which my dad saw and said, "Are those eyeballs?" He always was a meat and potatoes type of guy.
I now go to a church that I find both frustrating and endearing. Religion traps me. Simplicity beckons me. At times I feel I have everything to offer; at others, nothing. There are days when the worship makes me want to jump up and down (which I don't exactly feel free to do) and there are days when I want to shut them all up because it seems so shallow (which I also don't exactly feel free to do, and that's probably a good thing).
I now dwell in the middle of both extreme doubt and extreme anticipation. There are days when I expect God to do something way too cool (which He so often does!) and there are days when I could almost call myself an agnostic* (did I really just say that?). Questions, contradictions, and hesitations fill my head and I long for a God bigger than the one America has formed with her own two hands of domesticated religion and a consumeristic society. Surely, there must be more than this...
I now read books with titles like "Oh Me of Little Faith" and "A Glimpse into Glory." (The two alone cover the complete spectrum of faith and doubt.) I read in my room, I read in my car, I drive 17 miles just to go read at a coffee shop, I read early in the morning, I read late at night, I drop my family off at church and drive another 15 minutes just to skip Sunday School and go read at Starbucks. (What's the point of blogs except for public confessions that you wouldn't dare confess elsewhere?) In general, I read a lot these days.
I now question EVERYTHING, which is no fun at all, because I know, deep down, that the most beautiful, fulfilling things on this earth or elsewhere, don't often come with neatly packaged answers. And even deeper down, my heart knows it wouldn't want a neatly packaged faith anyway. I am in love with a mysterious God, and despite all my questions and frustrations, He's still the God I come home to each night. *
With so many questions, books, thoughts, ponderings, I realize I need a way to express them. Hence...a new blog for this new chapter of life. Warning, I make no promises to its beauty, political correctness, lack of offensiveness, organization or otherwise. But I will try my best to keep it honest (which probably deserves a warning of its own). I'm just a normal girl living in a natural world that prays earnestly to see the display of the divine in the midst of such normalcy. I know some days will be successful, and others not so much. And such is life as we all know it.
If you're reading this, thanks. If you're already offended, please don't subscribe, it might not get better. If you have a responding thought, feel free to voice it. If you question, long, have faith and doubt, know God yet desire to know Him more, then welcome aboard. Any companionship along this journey is delightfully welcomed.
Until next time,
yours truly.
* A bit of clarity here - it might be a good thing to check out the actual definition of the word agnostic. Its connotation can be quite scary, but the actual definition is one who believes in God, or a god, but believes that he is largely unknowable. In some ways, I believe this about God, that He can't be explained away in some tidy "Dummy's Guide to God" book. Much to the chagrin of many desperately seeking intellectual minds, not even the Bible attempts to do that. At any rate, an agnostic is a long way off from an atheist, and the two shouldn't be confused.
* The credit for this thought goes to Zach, a student on one of my previous trips. In one of his blogs, he expressed this thought so beautifully, explaining how our relationship with God is reflected in the marriage covenant between a husband and wife. Though the blog itself doesn't exist anymore, the thought will stay with me for a lifetime. If you want to read more of Zach's words, click here.
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