Hey everyone. I know it has been a while since I last sat down to share with you all that has been going on. I apologize for that.
With that out of the way, let me talk to you a little bit about "life". I find it funny how God seems to take people through similar paths in life. I've been dealing with a lot of things that are weighing heavy on my heart and mind lately (more on that later) and dwelling on the distance that I seem to create between me and God when I am "in the valley" (as my good friend, Mango would say).
Its a feeling of complete loneliness.
For some reason this afternoon, I decided to look at my band's (I should say ex-band's) MySpace page and noticed that my friend, Jason, added a blog post to his MySpace about prayer. More specifically he posted about dealing with his lack of prayer and disappointment of prayers of the past. The entire post is on a site he is involved with called "The Rabbit Room" and can be found here.
I'll be honest with you... reading the post brought me to a point of helplessness (because I'm not coming out of my valley like Jason is), fear (because I'm reminded of the troubles in life right now) and jealousy (because Jason speaks so eloquently into the lives of others via cool things like "The Rabbit Room" and I'm just... well... me).
How sick is that?
So what's going on that brings this heaviness? Let me give a quick list:
1) Job anxiety: I'll leave it at this, but know that there are significant changes that leave me anything but comfortable and confident.
2) Church anxiety: I started a new service with three friends at a church here in town almost 1 year ago. Two of the friends have removed themselves from any sort of active involvement, which leads the brunt of the work for the other two.
3) Basement anxiety: We've lived in this house for nearly 5 years now. We finally decided to move on finishing the basement (we have a two year old living in our closet because the rooms for the children aren't done in the basement). As we've worked on the basement we've run into multiple issues: leaky, condensating windows, cracks in the foundation, budget issues (see reason #1), time issues (see reason #1 and #2), etc.
4) Health anxiety: My family has been sick this fall/winter. Don't know why, but it seems like as soon as one is healthy, the next one falls. Once it gets around to all six of us, it just seems to start over.
5) Personal disappointment: Over the past year, my convictions in certain areas related to our purpose and pursuits have strengthened considerably. The problem is, the more I strive after purpose, the more disappointed in my abilities I become.
What all does this amount to? Well, honestly not really much. There's nothing in the above list that really matters from an eternal perspective. Yet these very things have driven walls between me and God. I know that God didn't put the walls up, which means that I must have... so... here we go back to reason #5.
People always suggest taking a step back and gaining perspective on things. Or perhaps reading a book about particular matters. The big problem is that when I feel so strapped for time and energy that I can't even read THE book or talk to THE Man about what's going on, how could ever make time for some other reading material?
Now don't get me wrong... God's still done some amazing things lately. The problem is, I just simply don't understand "why?"... or better yet "why me?". This holds equally true for both the good and the bad situations.
Do you ever pray for God to show up in an amazingly unmistakable way? Do something so outrageous that there is no way to doubt? Did He do it or was it a case (as Jason describes) where you were just talking to yourself?
It is times like this that I wonder "is this a perfect plan or just a carnival ride?"
My heart knows what the answer is, but my mind seems to want to disagree.
Jim
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2 comments:
Your investment(s) at church seem to be well spent; I've heard only positive reports about the new Sunday evening worship at your church. And, since I don't attend your church, the fact that I hear any reports (and especially positive ones) adds even more validity to those reports!
True... there are people who really enjoy the new service. There are others (that seem more vocal) that think otherwise. All in all that doesn't surprise me, its just tiresome to handle working a service with only a couple people week after week.
I guess nobody ever said that trying to be an effective part of God's family was easy or relaxing, eh? *grin*
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