Sometimes you just have to write…

I’ve been itching to write even though I don’t even know what I want to say.

Thoughts and emotions are swirling around inside me and I keep waiting for them to slow down and settle, but they aren’t.

At 33 years old, I feel like I know less than ever before.

At 19 I thought I had everything figured out.  I had all the answers and I lost patience with the adults who just didn’t see the world the way I did.

Can you say naive?

But now, the more I read and the more I dig into my own heart for answers, the more I come up with questions.

Less sure than ever before about the right way to do things or the right perspective to have or the right approach to any and every situation.

My world has gone from very black and white to a hundred shades of gray.

For an extremist like me this can be unsettling, but I’m learning to lean into the questions.  The uncertainty.  The unknown.

As a person who calls herself a “Christian” or maybe, more accurately, a Christ-follower, I’ve grown less and less sure of what the Church at large preaches, and more and more sure of who it is that I follow.

I think the modern Christian Church has worked very hard to figure out what they are against and who they don’t agree with and what political party they align with, but they often miss the real message of the humble carpenter who came to change the world.

Love.

Hope.

Peace.

Joy.

He didn’t come with a formula for right living.

There IS NO formula for right living.

He loved people.  He served them.  He offered them hope.  He accepted them.  He embraced them.

Do we do that?

Or, are we so concerned with our own agendas and ideas and thoughts that we are missing opportunities to love and serve and offer hope and accept and embrace?

When the world around us is hurting, how do we respond?

When our friends have babies who are sick and we have mothers-in-law fighting cancer and there are bombings and human trafficking  and everything seems grim and hopeless, what is our response?

Do we bury our heads in the sand?  Do we offer trite expressions like “God never gives us more than we can handle”?  Do we cling tighter to our routines and false sense of control over our lives?

I know that I often find myself in denial about what’s going on.  It’s too painful and uncertain to think about, so I just don’t.

I try harder to do everything “right”.  I deceive myself by thinking that if I do things just so, I can insulate myself and my family from tragedy.

I also refuse to worry about the “what ifs”, thinking that what we fear most will come upon us.

None of that is helpful.

It’s selfish and it’s ignorant.

It is not within my power to prevent anything from happening.  I can’t “trick the system” by not worrying about things as a way to stop them from coming to me.

We live in a fallen world where bad things happen.

But that doesn’t mean our God isn’t good.

Though my faith may shake, I’m choosing to trust.

I’m choosing to believe that even though I don’t always understand Him, He Is Good.

My courageous friend Diana’s Instagram profile says, “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him.”

I cannot read that sentence aloud without choking up.

It’s so brutal, yet beautiful.

Brutiful…

as Glennon would say.

So the answer is…

I don’t know.  But I’ll hug you and love on you the best that I can.

I will do my darndest not to offer advice or try to fix you or the situation.

I’ll pray like my life depends on it.

And I’ll mess up.  That’s for certain.

But its ok if we mess up.  God’s mercies are new every morning.

Amen.