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Part 10: Relationship to God continued

10/14/2008 7:22:23 AM

Journal Entry

(Months before we knew for certain that we would move, I felt a leading to get ready to move, and began to pack.)

Psalm 139—You know me…such knowledge is too wonderful for me.

I think that’s partly why I doubt sometimes.  What God does is so far beyond and above me, is so amazing that it is almost unreal in the midst of normal, daily work.

As I pack and clean to get ready to move, I often wonder if I’m crazy.  How hard it must have been for Noah—and he had a bunch of people watching him building an ark on dry land.

God did convict me Sunday morning that I wasn’t taking his leading to get ready seriously enough.  So now, I’m very serious.  I packed a lot of my winter things in order to clean out the closet.  And I know God’s leading is for our benefit.  So why is it so hard to grasp and carry with me?

Journal Entry

God’s word, his will, his commands, are all part of him—part of who God is and can’t be separated from him.  They’re not constructs, but grounded in the being of God.  We can’t say that about any created thing.

I just realized I’ve been trying so hard, once again, to be somebody’s perfect little girl.  I’m trying to be perfect at church, and trying to be perfect here at home; trying to make it all work somehow.  How do I get myself in a position where I think it’s me that makes it all work?

Planning hymns for Sunday, I looked at the lessons.  The first is from Genesis 18:1-10a, where Abraham encounters three strangers, offers them hospitality and receives a promise of a son.  The heading on the bulletin insert says: ‘The Lord promises the birth of a child to Abraham and Sarah precisely when they are too old to have children on their own.  Only the Lord could accomplish such a thing.’

When I read that I almost cried, and I felt the presence of God with me very strongly.  How hard it is to wait for God to fulfill his promises, and yet it is often when we think everything is ruined, too late, etc., that God acts.  There must be no doubt about who it is that acts.

I’ve been getting increasingly anxious about the time, feeling like it’s running out and wanting to ask God: are you sure you know what you’re doing?  I was so certain that things had to be accomplished within a certain time frame.  That’s all gone.  Now all that remains is to see what God will do.

Journal Entry

Found out nothing is as settled with this possible new position as I thought it was.  I’ll probably process this more later, but I know I’m angry at God.  I remember Jeremiah’s words:  you are to me a deceitful brook.  I feel ‘why did you make me see this if you’re not going to follow through?’

And yet, even my anger isn’t complete.  God loves too strongly; I can’t refuse that, deny it, or turn away from it.  Nothing has changed—just my thinking.  Waiting patiently for God to act after he’s given a promise is the hardest thing to do.  God’s timing is definitely not ours.

Everything has been thrown into doubt for me: my call—to anyplace, my doctorate proposal, everything.  And yet I know the Lord can be trusted.  That’s what he asks of me now—trust.  The Lord isn’t capricious, nor does he set his people up just to knock them down.  There is purpose in everything.

Journal Entry

Reading Psalm 34: A righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers them from them all.  It doesn’t mean an easy fix or even the answers the person wanted.  It’s a promise of presence in everything, and the power to guide and renew and make whole.

Journal Entry

I think of how God has changed me, and how sometimes I feel less dependent upon him.  But I realize that’s not true—but it has been bothering me.  Not less dependent on God, but less bound by rules and regulations.  In fact, stripping all of the other things from me (my need to have my vocation, marriage, etc., give me a sense of identity) has made me see even more clearly how much I need God.  It’s just that God has ‘grown me up.’

The child is gone—not away, but grown, integrated—is me.  I am the child who was, and now I see differently, and I understand God differently.  I know this life has purpose and is good, and Jesus chose to live in it.  It’s just that sometimes I so long for that time when all of us will be with God:  face to face, no more losses, no more standing alone (yes, an illusion—we are never alone, but still sometimes I feel that way).

I love the mystery of it all—life, everything—the mystery of God.  And when I’m able for just a moment, to catch the edge of it, a glimpse into it, I know my soul’s longing, and I long for God even more.

I now read Scripture differently, and can’t always say that it speaks to me.  That has concerned me, too.  Yet I know, when necessary, God works through it to reach me.  It’s not that God’s Word is limited; it just means, right now, I am somehow limited.  But God will be at work in that too.

(In the above entry, you can hear the questions I’m beginning to raise about my relationship with God and how I experience Scripture, i.e., the bible.)

Journal Entry

The body of Christ (the church) is not a construct.  How it is expressed, lived out, etc., is a construct, but the actual, living body of Jesus is not.  It’s not one system among many.  It is our context.  It’s real because Jesus is real, because Jesus brought it into being.  We are Christ’s body in the world.

It’s not a system, not a construct; it’s a reality brought into being through the life and death of Jesus.  It’s not a system I can move out of.  I am not alone.

(In the process of growing, I began to look at the many things that gave me my identity and sense of place in the world, and I realized they weren’t an essential part of me. Not in the way I had thought.  This was especially true of my vocation.  Where once I might have said ‘my job isn’t what I do—it’s who I am’, now I was beginning to say ‘my job isn’t who I am, it’s what I do.   I could take another job or learn another vocation and I would still be me.  Whether I work in a fast food restaurant, an office or a church, I’m still me.’

When I began to recognize this, I first felt freedom and then I felt loss, as though something very precious was being taken away. That made me feel lonely because I didn’t yet have anything to take its place.  In this last entry, you can see I’m defending my way of understanding ‘church’.)

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