What Do I Believe?

What do I believe? What do I know with certainty, at least the majority of the time? Not just with my head, but with my heart?

I'm afraid I have to start by answering a question with a question – how do I tell the difference between what is in my head and what is in my heart? Tim Keller talks about “descending with the mind into the heart,” which sounds good, but again, I'm not sure how that plays out.

Do I believe that God exists? Absolutely.

Do I believe that God is in control? I believe that he could be if he so chose, but that for reasons surpassing my understanding, he decided that free will was key. So that's where it gets tricky. To some extent, sure, he's in control, but he gives us enough slack on our leashes to hang ourselves with. All things may work together for good in the long run, but when it comes to individual decisions, it seems like we're pretty much at the mercy of our own stupidity.

Do I believe that God is good? Fundamentally, yes. And I believe that he can make good out of even the biggest messes we make. But he still lets the messiness happen, and since he functions on a timetable that is completely... other... I don't know how we are supposed to see him working. We're just too small.

Do I believe God is good for me? I'm not sure that he sees me most of the time. I fall through the cracks. I call out and hear... silence.

It's no secret that I struggle to trust. You know I have trouble with the intangible; it's not coincidental that for months you guys had to say to me, “As real as this hug is, that's how real God is.” “We love you, Jeni, but God loves you way more.” “Our love for you is a picture of how God loves you.” “This is the kingdom of God breaking in.” Up to a point, if I couldn't believe it for myself, you said you could believe it for me. We've passed that point, and I don't know how to take the next step on my own. Bebo Norman has a song with the lyric, “When your faith is hard to find, you can borrow mine.”

I feel like I'm living on borrowed faith.

You say that things really can be known for certain. My circumstances tell me that even things that appear to be set in stone can crumble in an instant. And that doesn't even get me to the mess of my feelings. That's where things really start to get ugly.

Micah told me on Sunday that for years, he's been unable to see that God is working, but that since I moved in, he can now see God working all over the place. I don't know what that means. What is it that he sees? What do people see that shows them that God is working, here and now, among us? To me it mostly just looks like a jumbled mess.

I do see that God saved my life through your family. That is something that I know for certain. What I can't understand is why he would go to the trouble, breaking down all the defenses, slowly building that tentative trust, making me believe that maybe, just maybe, I might be lovable after all, if he was just going break me all over again. God sees all my biggest fears. And he continues to either (a) allow or (b) orchestrate them into coming true.

I can't figure out how to reconcile the two sides: one side is that we need people, a family, a community, to point us to God, to help us see what we can't see ourselves. The other is that we can't rely on that family, that community; ultimately, our trust has to be in Christ alone. So how do you get from the signpost to the destination if the sign can't be relied on?

Let's say for a minute that God is in control of what has happened in the past month or so. That he uses bad decision-making processes and shallow-minded people and broken promises to move people closer to him. This is not a God that makes sense to me. Again, if I can't trust the people who are pointing me to God, how am I supposed to trust the God they are pointing to?

Yes, I'm ranting, but that's what blogs are for.

I want to believe. I want a God who is way bigger than me, and by definition, that's going to be a God I can never truly understand. I'm so tired of it being about me. My brain is a labyrinth, and I'm lost inside it. Even with guidance I kept getting off track, but then I had someone, several someones, to show me the way back. Now not only am I lost, but I know what I'm missing.

I miss you guys. I miss being integrally involved in something I believe in, something good, something real. I miss being a Cryder. Being a friend is a pale shadow when you've tasted what it is to be family. I am lonely, and I have no social skills, and I'm reaching for a God who seems to keep moving away. I am reaching. I do want him. And I can't find him. And he doesn't seem to care enough to find me.

February 26, 2010 (The Day You Told Me I Had to Move Out)

I am in a dark place.

And my response has been to give in to it, to cast aside all the truths and lessons this wonderful family has been pouring such time and effort into imparting to me, and to run back to the same old self-destructive patterns. I suck. But here's the other truth:

"If you'll hold on to me for dear life," says God, "I'll get you out of any trouble. I'll give you the best of care if you'll only get to know and trust me. Call me and I'll answer, be at your side in bad times; I'll rescue you, then throw you a party. I'll give you a long life, give you a long drink of salvation!" (Psalm 91)

This is what I need to choose to believe. Belief, like love, is a choice. A decision to be made anew each morning. Not a feeling, but an act of your will. And it's not just positive thinking. Yes, it's active, but no, I can't do it without God, in a void. It's not magical, but it is mystical. And I don't know any way to begin but to step out in faith, whatever that means, and live today, this one day, as if I am valuable and God has a legitimate plan for me and loves me as I am.

February 24, 2010

This is me, about to go into Counseling Session #4 with Ryan. I wish I didn't dread it. I want to yearn for the opportunity to work through my mess, to grow and change, to get one step closer to being the person God has created and called me to be...

But I don't. Instead, I anticipate failure. There is no way to prepare for these meetings. I don't know what I'm supposed to talk about, how to initiate a productive conversation. I can't seem to answer the questions posed to me, by Ryan or by the books. And I feel guilty sucking up Marilyn's precious time with my brokenness.

February 16, 2010

Unite my heart to fear your name.

Verses like "I give thanks to you, O LORD my God, with my whole heart" sound so familiar to me that the meaning gets lost. My heart is divided. My focus is scattered, broken, divided, divisive. "One thing have I asked of the Lord"is a pipe dream. I can't pray it. I can't live it. Only His Spirit inside me, His grace working through me, can possibly unite my heart.

And as always, the big question – how do I get there? "Remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose." (Acts 11:23) And what does that look like? Following (not imitating) Jesus – loving Him, trusting that He is in control and working everything to my good.

Starting March 1st, I'm renting out my place to Steve and Karen Bowyer of Tucson, Arizona. I'm scared – of the (slightly smaller after yesterday) mountain of work to prepare for their arrival, and stressed about all the things that could go wrong once they're in and I'm a "landlord." But God must have orchestrated this, so I need to believe that He's got it covered. I suck at this, so... unite my heart, that I might fear Your name.

February 9, 2010

I feel like I said things pretty well to Christian last night, putting words to my struggle, and now I can't quite retrace my train of thought. Something about this gi-normous gap I'm feeling between the "identify your God-substitutes and repent for them" and "wait and trust God." Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me anymore either. All I know for certain is that I'm missing steps in there somewhere, and I keep getting lost.

How do you fall in love? I have no clue. How do I build a relationship of love and trust with God when I can't manage to do it with the people right next to me? And the inevitable answer is, you can't. God has to bridge the gap. And the frustration and discouragement kick in. Because I don't know where to go from there.

This entire realm of 'relationship' is so foreign to me, so alien to my experience... if God is right there right now trying to break in, would I even recognize it? Sometimes I think I'm missing that piece of my humanity entirely, or that maybe it's just been beaten out of me. To say it has atrophied doesn't ring true, since I never felt like I had it. So I don't know what to do.

I know others are seeing supposed progress in me. All I feel is tired and old, and getting exponentially more exhausted and older by the day. My world feels small and constricted. Where is this freedom that has been promised?

February 6, 2010

Here are a couple more pieces in the puzzle of my life. I don't understand how they fit into the big picture yet, but I want to commit them to paper before they slip away...

Freedom is a process. A process that occurs incrementally through a relationship with Jesus.

There has been so much focus on getting rid of idols and giving up identities, and not so much on how to fill the void with God.

Trust is not something that can be manufactured. Real relationship starts with getting to know the other Person. All the waiting and resting in the Lord stuff is not Step One. You can't trust someone until you really understand and believe that they love you.

February 3, 2010

I don't know where to go from here.
I don't know how to process the information I'm given.
I don't know how to ask for help on questions in a book nobody else has read.
No matter how many times you tell me Tripp asks 'really good questions,' it doesn't make them any less impossible to answer. In fact, each time I fail, I get more frustrated and it just gets harder.

I can't find a middle ground on the emotional spectrum. I'm either switched off (intentionally numb, or helplessly paralyzed), or I'm a sobbing, hysterical basketcase. Either way, in silence or tears, I can't make myself understood. And both ways, I'm wasting everybody's time.

I'm three weeks into this Tripp book, and I can't coherently tell you a single thing I've read or learned. You know how sometimes the words just start lighting up on the page? Everything seems relevant, there aren't enough highlighters in the world... Well, this is the opposite. Nothing lately seems to sink in. There's not a mark on any page of any book I'm reading. It just bounces off.

I can't seem to make any connections. When I read or listen to something, even if it seems vaguely relevant in the moment, I can't remember what it was 15 minutes later. And if I think about it too hard, I just end up crying. I don't even know what I'm supposed to get out of this, or even what I want to get out of this, anymore. It's just a big confusing jumbled mess.

I don't understand Ryan, and I did understand Christian, so what the hell are we doing? Marilyn is trying so hard to translate between us, but counseling through a translator seems ludicrous. What Christian saw as me not being able to hear him anymore, I saw as me finally really engaging, no longer hiding my frustrations but trying to plow through them, to actively make progress. And it totally backfired, and now I feel like I've lost my counselor, and that my friend is giving up on me.

I don't know what else I'm supposed to give up. I don't know what I'm still hanging onto that I'm not supposed to. From here it seems like I've willingly handed over everything that hadn't already been forcibly taken from me – and I'm praying, and I'm repenting – and still I'm apparently doing it wrong. Yes, I get that 'hiding in my room' is not the solution, but what is? How am I supposed to talk about things I don't understand with someone who doesn't understand me? Or answer questions I don't know the answers to?