dry

I've been feeling more like a shell lately than a person. My days are blank, just dates on a calendar with hours I am busy and not much else. I am an outline that can't seem to get filled in. I find myself searching every aspect of my life for the hole that has drained the life out of my days, but I can't seem to find it. I push and pull at events and activities and people, trying to squeeze a few more drops of meaning from them, meaning that I know is there but just cannot reach. It eludes me at every turn. And when I do find it, it is not enough. I am not full.

Sitting on my bed in the quietness of the evening, hearing only the faint sounds of leftover rain finally finding its way from the leaves to the ground, I could do nothing but stare. Nothing felt satisfying. I am so numb that even sleep is not appealing, since even temporary unconsciousness cannot refill what I have lost somewhere. Eyes wandering around my room, they stopped a moment on my copy of Eugene Peterson's "The Message".

It has been a long time since I opened this book. In college, frustrated with the way that the modern church seems to find it necessary to dumb down the Bible to reach the mass market, I chose to prefer the translations that didn't make Bible passages so cut-and-dried. Yet once upon a time I bought this book for a reason. Sometimes wading through the language of the Bible obscures the simple truths that lie in its passages, and occasionally I need a reminder of what is at the core of this Story I am a part of. Tonight was such a night.

Flipping through Psalms, I landed on The Message translation of Psalm 42:

"A white-tailed deer drinks

from the creek;

I want to drink God,

deep draughts of God.

I'm thirsty for God-alive."

a few verses later, it continues:

"These are the things I go over and over, 

emptying out the pockets of my life.

I was always at the head of the worshiping crowd,

right out in front, 

leading them all,

eager to arrive and worship,

shouting praises, singing thanksgiving--

celebrating, all of us, God's feast!

Why are you down in the dumps, dear soul?

Why are you crying the blues?

Fix my eyes on God--

soon I'll be praising again.

He puts a smile on my face.

He's my God.

When my soul is in the dumps, I rehearse

everything I know of you,

From Jordan depths to Hermon heights,

including Mount Mizar.

Chaos calls to chaos,

to the tune of your whitewater rapids.

Your breaking surf, your thundering breakers

crash and crush me.

Then God promises to love me all day, 

sing songs all through the night!

My life is God's prayer."

How long has it been since I "fixed my eyes on God?" I have certainly spent the last few weeks (or even, to be honest, every moment since graduation) fixing my eyes on everything but God. I have tried to find meaning and identity in jobs, in grades, in relationships, in the future. Everything but my Father who has promised to love me unconditionally and never let me go. As my friend Andrew once told me, God won't let me fall off the map. Perhaps my restlessness, my yearning for something, is my soul telling me that it needs to be fed by the One and only, and until I learn to seek that, I truly will never find satisfaction. It isn't emptiness that I am feeling. 

It is thirst.

I want to drink God, deep draughts of God.

I'm thirsty for God-alive.

God of peace, of love, of truth, fill me where I have become empty. Pour your life into my soul so that I may feel alive, so that your love runs in my veins and your truth resounds in my mind. Fill me so full that I have no choice but to burst from the sheer abundance of life. Teach me what it means for my life to be Your prayer.

plummet

I say that I believe all the time.

I believe in God. I believe in forgiveness. I believe that He loves me. I believe that my family loves me. I believe that those I care about really do love me. I believe that everything will be okay. I believe I believe I believe I believe.

But I don't.

It isn't exactly that I don't believe those things, that I don't think of those things as true. More accurately, I don't think that I have committed my entire self to believing those things. I hold part of myself back, just in case it isn't true. There is a portion of my heart that I reserve to always keep a watchful eye out in every situation should one of those beliefs suddenly be disclosed as false and my suspicions confirmed. That allows me to get out while I can without getting too hurt. If I never fully commit to an idea, I will always be able to recover when that idea doesn't work out.

And this nice little plan of mine worked for a while. A long while, in fact. I've been protecting myself in such a fashion for virtually my entire life. But in the past year, two very important series of events have made me realize that I can't go on anymore with one hand always on the doorknob, ready to retreat at a moment's notice. First, I graduated and had every plan and sense of comfort pulled out from under me. And second--and those of you who know me, please forgive me for mentioning something that I normally don't go in depth about, being as afraid of feelings and warm fuzzies as I am-- I fell in love.

These two things, more than anything in my entire life, had made it utterly clear to me that I have a choice to make. I cannot survive a life of continual uncertainty and change-- the life that I know I have to live for at least a few more years-- without surrendering myself completely to the belief that God is in control, He loves me, and no matter how much I screw up He always will. I have to let myself accept that. I just do. And once I do, I can live the life that God has dreamed up for me, but until then I am only holding myself back from throwing myself at His feet in complete faith. And I have to give up rationalizing and the list of flaws that I keep about myself, and realize that love is not about being rational or being perfect but about loving someone for who they are that moment, and allowing them to love you. I can't keep expecting it all to fall out from under my feet at any moment. I have to throw myself in head-first-- do a damn cannonball into the things that I can't measure or prove via logical methods. I can't be scared of the things that I feel and experience just because their nature demands an element of uncertainty. 

So I'm letting go of all of my objections and letting myself-- all of myself-- land in whatever position life and love have for me. And the funny thing is that, while as with all inward transformations this letting go is a slow and gradual process, I feel as if my life feels like more of a plummet than anything at the moment.