I'm Back, but Just as Confused as Ever

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything. Anything on paper that is. I must’ve written about a hundred blogs in my head. Days go by where much of my thinking is spent on various topics, with an author’s tone taking over as if I’m addressing a group and not merely thinking to myself. There’ve been many nights where as badly as I want to be sleeping I cannot slow down the train of thoughts that whiz through the space between my ears. And just as a train passing by at its highest speeds becomes not a train at all but an image of colors and light and sound rushing through the air, so my thoughts may fly by me quickly, without a certain shape and form. Unlike a train my thoughts are not held down to go in one direction, at any moment they seem to change and evolve, at times like a tornado to pick up and hop over a topic and set back down someplace else entirely. All the while however, those thoughts are whirling, and spinning , and creating a maddening energy that I simply want to dissipate so that once again I sense the calm that was before the storm began.

I think on the one hand it is silly that I don’t write more. There is so much that I could say, so much that I probably need to get onto paper because things kept in my head never get sorted out. My thoughts need time to stretch their legs, to roam free and to find a destination. Locked inside my head they get jumbled and confused, much like the necklaces I keep squishing into a small jewelry bag. Though I put them in separately, whenever I go back and open the bag again they are inevitably a mass of tangles. So my thoughts so often seem to be.

On the other hand, I go through phases with my thoughts. Sometimes I think I’ve wrestled them down. I think, most curious of all, that I know what I think, and that I’m ready to commit to cementing them with ink. But just when it seems that I’ve got it all straight, a cog falls off and the wheels start running away in different directions and the whole machine has run down again.
Today I realized something that may be good, but perhaps is troublesome for me. I don’t think it’s any surprise to say that I’m an analytical person, or that I am introspective. However, at the same time, I am completely emotional. I want feelings and tears and laughter and joy. I want meaning and purpose and depth.

The two will not always appease each other. My mind is hungry for reason and logic. I have cried oftentimes at my inability to understand the things that I believe will bring me the highest passion and in my mind, the highest purpose.

I don’t want to be like either camp that seems to be found in the world around me- the camp of science which says there is nothing real that I can’t touch or measure, or the camp that says knowledge matters for nothing, only what I feel is important…
Both are wrong; both are death. What good is a body of only bones? What good is a heart without a skeleton? Most of all, what good is a man without a soul? Before God breathed in Adam he was but dust. And so, without the soul, dust is all we would be. Without heart and muscle we are good for nothing but burial. Without bone and soul we are nothing more than meat.

I don’t want to be like those whose reality lays only in experience yet I feel I go crazy for lack of spiritual experience. What is it that others speak of when they say they delight in God’s presence? When they are calmed by His still voice? When they are sure of His guidance?
I pray. I pause, I wait for something. A thought? A feeling? A nudge? A whisper? A sign? I know not what. I have this knowledge that says I ought to be satisfied. I have been given a relationship with the All-satisfying One. I hear others speak of their satisfaction, of their peace, of their wholeness…What have I done wrong or not done right? Where did I miss a turn? Did I sleep in too many mornings? Have I not wanted it enough? How do I get myself to want it more?

I try to conjure the feelings. I try to create a response within myself. I hope for an experience that breaks the ice above my head and leaves me at last, drinking in the air and freedom of the open above me. Inhaling that delicious satisfaction that heals and takes me past a point that I will never go back to.

But right now I seem to be on the Ferris Wheel again. Each time I think I’ve come over the top, for that moment when everything around me is clear and I can see for miles, and I believe I’ve seen my last day at the bottom, then somehow my sun once more turns to twilight and I find myself dropping down, down, down, and I can’t get off the ride. The bottom comes once more and I tell myself I need only wait, stay focused, and I will be lifted again to the heights…

The trouble is, I know that it’s in me that this problem lays, it must right? I am not forced onto the ride, but have created it in my own mind. My experience tells me that I am rising and falling, but so does that of a man with vertigo though he has never gotten off the couch...

Oh to see clearly the road I am walking on, to understand the shallows of my own heart, and even more the depths of its creator. To end the ups and the downs and to be one of those called “faithful” or “constant”, one of those who believes without seeing…

Last night I went to a friend's baptism...as I sat in the service my thoughts took flight as usual...this time to:

Father I don’t understand…”My grace is sufficient for you.”
Father I don’t want you enough or love You enough….”My grace is sufficient for you.”
I can’t DO this. I don’t know how to and I don’t have the power anyway…I am weak…”My grace is sufficient for you.”
What will become of me? How will I get up again? “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness”
Most gladly therefore I boast in my weaknesses because when I am weak Christ is strong. I will wait once more for the fog to lift and hope once again that it will never return...