Turning Around

It's been a rough couple of months.
Now that I think about it, my last post talked about how distant I had grown from my Savior. I wish I could tell you that this one isn't similar, but unfortunately I can't. This time it was worse. Until this last Sunday I was in an even worse spot than I was in the spring. I could not bring myself to pray. I never thought about God except to ask why he had abandoned me (in my flawed opinion). When I did think about my faith all it did was bring tears to my eyes, so naturally I ran away from that idea. The issue with that plan is that everything else brought tears to my eyes anyway. So that kinda backfired. The simplest explanation for my lack of faith is this: depression. 
It comes back every few years. Sometimes every few months. Not that I'm raising the white flag or anything, but I have come to terms with the fact that I will never be fully free. The intensity varies. This fall was probably the worst outbreak I have ever had. And the worst thing about depression is that it has a knack for robbing me of all the things that might heal me. It's hard to reach out to the people that love me. Some of the people that love me hardly even want to reach out to me because I'm not myself. Most importantly, since faith is an abstract concept and abstract things are typically just out of my reach when I'm in the depths of the disease, I can hardly access faith at all. 
Several things over the past few weeks have helped me turn around, and I've begun the struggle back up the hill. Sometimes I slide back, but I have slowly begun to regain my footing with more assurance. And finally, last Sunday, I found my faith again. 

Or rather, my faith found me.

The church I have gone to during this time of wandering since graduation has been a constant blessing. Somehow here, more than anywhere else I've worshiped in my lifetime, I hear God's voice speaking directly to me, often with exactly the thing I need to hear most. This past Sunday was no exception. It was, in fact, the most potent example. It's not too often that a pastor preaches on the Old Testament reading for the day, but that day it was the passage about God's role as a potter, with me as the clay (Isaiah 64:8-9). To summarize it neatly, I was reminded not only that I am a work in constant progress, but also that making pottery is not easy. Sometimes to make a strong pot a potter uses less water (typically used to make the clay more malleable) and has to use a heavier hand. Even though I already knew it, I needed that reminder that God has never promised to be gentle, at least not in the way I would perceive it. I, much like clay, am resistant. I don't often cooperate. But what truly hit me, and made me stop in my tracks, is that no matter how much I resist or how awful or useless or worthless I think I am, God has promised to work on me until I am complete. He has saved me for a reason, and he loves me enough to keep at it.

Yesterday I was reading a Nicholas Sparks book (it turned out pretty lame, which I expected, but it was entertaining at least). Unless you live under a rock, you probably know that Mr. Sparks frequently writes incredibly sappy love stories. The kind that they make into tragic movies that leave your girlfriend/wife/mom/sister crying, probably because somebody dies or (crying doesn't always make sense) because everything works out really well. However engaging and nice his books may be, I've never looked to Nicholas Sparks for any great wisdom. Imagine my surprise then, when I found a quote yesterday that was actually incredibly deep, and really made me think. Are you ready? Here it is: 
"Love, after all, always said more about those who felt it than it did about the ones they loved."
Although it seems odd to apply a Sparks quote to my awesome God, in this case it seemed fitting. The fact that God loves me says little about me. I am still broken and my sinful nature still fights against God's love every day. God's love says everything about how wonderful He is. In the Concordance in the back of my Bible, there are almost three pages of tiny print pointing to passages that use some form of "love". In the past, when I would try to find a verse or passage, I sometimes found that fact annoying. I was on a mission, and I didn't want to skim through all those entries to find what I needed. Today, once again, I found myself searching through that section. To be honest, I never found the exact verse I was looking for. Instead I kept getting "distracted" looking at the multitude of passages that have aided and consoled me across the years. Verses and chapters that speak of the depth and nature God's love, and the example it should be for our love to each other. It finally hit me how completely awe-inspiring it is that "love" is one of the biggest sections of the Concordance. I have heard the phrase "God is love" so many times, and never truly grasped what that meant. Love comes from and leads back to God. The truest, deepest, and most unconditional love we will ever have is that which is given to us freely and abundantly by God. A love so strong that he stands by us in all our trials, no matter how much we tell him we don't need him. A love that bears the insult of every sin and every slight, and still accepts us with joy when we realize how wrong we were. A love so deep that he gave up His Son, extending His own self to us and holding nothing back. 

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." (1 John 4:7-11)

This is my fairytale love. The love the stretches across all boundaries and all time and comes to me in big miracles and small whispers. My prayer is for the strength to accept it and give it to others.

Follow the Leader

Hello again friends! 

I would find it awkward to jump right back into writing a post without acknowledging the fact that it has been well over a year since I wrote anything in this blog. I've toyed with the idea many times, and never sat down to actually write anything. Also, in complete honesty, my well of faith had been very shallow for much of that year. Recently I've begun to look toward God again. I can't say that I necessarily "strayed from the path" during my long silence, but for a long time I've been going through the motions while my heart was in turmoil. I'd like to touch on that struggle a little bit in this post. 

This year has been absolutely full of changes, as the end of college usually is. I could fill paragraphs with the details of my story - what caused me to distance myself from God, and the lessons I've learned - but that's not really the point. If you'd like to hear my story let's meet for coffee some time. If you don't know me well enough in real life to meet for coffee, you probably shouldn't be that curious anyway. 

Anyway, the summary of the issue is that I filled my life with other things to distract myself, and stopped communicating with God. A few months ago I realized that I couldn't remember the last time I had stopped to pray on my own. I've always been someone who can fill a quiet moment with thoughts of prayer, but it had been a very long time since I had one of those silent conversations with my Father. In fact, when life took some rough turns and people in my life told me to pray about it, I felt awkward and uncomfortable with the idea. One day in church I realized that I was angry at God. I was so ashamed of myself! I had never understood people who got angry at God! After the service was over I went to my car and wept. For months I had been ignoring the emptiness in my heart where I used to feel the love of Christ. Now that the main thing I had used to replace Him was gone, I was angry. I had been sure that I was following God's will for my life and interpreting the signs and finding encouragement like I was supposed to. Now I couldn't bring myself to pray, and I didn't trust my ability to interpret God's will, and I was expressing that as anger towards God. 

Friends, it has taken months to heal, but that day was a turning point in my journey. 

Shortly after realizing how angry I was, I found myself sitting on the bluff of Lake Michigan late at night and whispering prayers out loud. I confessed all my guilt and anger, and spoke to my Father about the pain and doubt in my heart. As my emotions emptied and I felt I had no more to say, the wind that been strong up until that point died down to a gentle breeze. Rarely have I felt God's presence so strongly, and the peace that filled my heart is not something I can express in words. That was the moment I began to really heal. God has put people in my life, as He always does, to lead me back to Him. He shows His love to me every day through them. 

Despite being encouraged in my faith, I've continued to have many struggles in the past months. God never promised me an easy path. Here I sit, a college graduate, looking forward with terror and doubt. My path is set before me: I'm enrolled in graduate school that will last another three years. After that, with the profession I've chosen, it should be relatively easy to find a job. The problem is that I'm not sure it's really what I want. As I approached graduation I felt pessimistic. The sense of accomplishment that should accompany a college graduation was markedly absent. Slowly I've come to appreciate the importance of this step, but the endlessness of my path still has me discouraged. Most days the idea of more school makes me want to run and hide, and I'm not sure if it's just the prospect of more school or specifically the subject I'm planning on studying that has me more scared. Like I said, I've lost a lot of faith in my ability to interpret God's will. Here's what I realized the other day though:

Whether I interpret it perfectly or not, God's will still prevails.

When I look at the positive side of the events of the last year, the lesson I learn is that God blesses us through what might seem like the worst of times. Even things that seem so dark and confused and messy are being used to accomplish God's plan. 

My bachelor's degree is in psychology. My biggest lesson in getting that degree, and the philosophy I have about life after studying psychology for 2 years, is that there is no right answer. Nobody has it all figured out! For someone like me that's a scary thought. Having a well-defined plan is pretty important to my sense of well-being. It's something I've had to get over as life becomes increasingly unpredictable. A few weeks ago God spoke to me, as he often does, through music. A friend had composed a choral piece and needed a small choir to perform it for his conducting class. The song was based on Psalm 139, and the repeated idea was verses 23-24:

"Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 

See if there is any evil within me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

After running from God for so long and trying to hide the doubts and fears in my heart, the first part of that passage hit me like a ton of bricks. Finally I felt willing to open myself back up to God, even admitting the ugly anxious thoughts that are so shameful to me. My Father is full of love and grace, and forgives my unbelief, though I am stubborn and undeserving. The second half of the passage is also extremely important. When we open up to God and ask him to speak to us and search our hearts, he guides us in the way we should go. Right now what I need most is guidance, and I am so thankful that God has brought me back to Him and continues to gently guide my steps. I still don't have the right answer, and likely never will, but I can once again see how I have been guided through the good and bad so far, and trust that His guidance will lead me to wherever I'm supposed to be next.