Bzzzz.
THWACK!
That's what I heard all day long yesterday. A gigantic fly - you know, the ones that are so big you think it's a bee - kept smacking itself into the window in front of the couch I was sitting on. All day. Here's how it would go: I could hear the fly buzzing casually around the room, then a pause and CHARGE!
BZZZZZZZ...... THWACK!
Sometimes, I swear as it bounced off the window, I could see it shakes it little head, furrow its brow in an attempt to figure out what it was doing wrong, and why it could not get outside. All day long, this happened.
A keen reader will note that from the above illustration, that I, in fact, sat on the couch all day. Aside from the ten or so steps it takes for me to get to the bathroom and a few petrifying trips into the Basement of Doom to do laundry, this would be an accurate summation of my day. Some may lambast me for my laziness when there are so many things on my to do list, but truly I think I needed a day to just sit and look out the window.
And I needed to sit and stew on God. Who and what he is to me right now, and who and what I am to him, and what precisely I'm supposed to do with and about the answers to both those questions. In my last couple of real quiet times, the ones when I actually think about what I'm reading and really genuinely pray, in those times, I'm actually starting to be honest with God again.
To be honest with the fact that I feel pretty shitty in my heart, but on the surface I've been acting like everything is hunky dory.
To be honest with the fact that the advice I give other women, is not working in my life ( Here's a great example: If a woman told me she was feeling bad about x, y or even z, I would tell her that feelings are not real, they are part of our flesh and to stake her flag in the truth God provides in his word.)
To be honest with the fact taht I tell my friends I trust God, that I tell God I trust God, but somewhere, deep down in there, I really don't.
To be honest with the fact that I believe God has hurt me and I don't know why he did. (Once again, if a woman came to me with this complaint, I would tell her that God allowed the hurt, but didn't do the hurting.)
To be honest with the fact that I know, or think I know, the "answers" to these sorts of questions, but that I'm not sure if I believe them.
To be hosent with the fact that I am scared of God - not that I fear him, but that I am scared of him - and that is why I have been quietly angry at him for the last year.
Slowly but surely in these last few real quiet times, I've come to understand that this is the place my heart is in. I've been pondering about the dreadful thing in my heart, what I should do about it. What I should do. I am a very foolish girl indeed. Today I realized that there is nothing I can do about it, clinging to all of this nastiness and keeping it trapped down in my heart, going through the motions of my faith, That's what I can do about it, and that's what I have been doing for the last year.
So I asked God for help. For the reals this time.
I told him all of this stuff and I asked him to take out of my heart the thing of which I cannot let loose. And I told him I was scared of him. Because I prayed a prayer not too unlike that one round about this time last year and he shattered me. I'm not to well convinced he's put me back together yet, and I think it's because I have been resisting him. This time though, I asked him, begged him in fact to be gentle with me.
I believe He will, because of this verse:
God gave that to me in my quiet time, just after I prayed that he'd gently take apart my heart. And I believe him. I think that's why I'm so confused right now. I genuinely believe God (not just in him, but I believe him) and I genuinely doubt him as well. It's a strange strange place to be.
Midway through Day on the Couch '07 I wrote the words "I am the Lord's." on my hand, something I haven't done for a long, long time. Maybe because i haven't genuinely believed it in an equally long time. I just started to write the letters without even really thinking about it. As I looked at it through out the day, there were some moments I knew it to be true and some moments I felt ashamed to have such a bold statement on my flesh.
But I think it's the start, the beginning of the new place God is taking me, that I certainly have not been to before...