There are a lot of things going through my head that I think I would like to write about.  But, somehow, when I try, nothing comes out right.  Maybe I’m trying too hard, maybe I just don’t have a firm grasp on what I’m thinking, or maybe those things are just not meant to be said by me, right now.  Still, I want to write something that will express some part of the jumbled thoughts that I can’t seem to untangle, so I’m giving it another try.

I think my biggest hindrance in writing about things lately is that I’ve had difficulty seeing God’s redemptive workings in the midst of struggle these past several weeks.  And I am honestly striving to not write without somehow expressing how God has revealed his goodness to me through my circumstances. Yet, at the same time, I don’t want to paint a picture that shows more faith, or more insight, or more hope than I honestly have.

The reality is that I am struggling to see His face.  I find myself with conflicting desires and questionable motives, and at the end of the day, I sometimes feel like He’s just not okay with the meager offering I bring.  I tell myself that He’s not going to listen, or answer, or care until I can get “it” right.  And it can seem like circumstances support that.  There’s confusion in my soul.  My days are filled with unrest – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  It seems like the “devourer” is taking ground away from me.  I feel defeated and I wonder where it was along the way that I lost the battle.  I yearn for His presence, but I don’t know how to get there.

Most days, this is the condition of my heart and mind.

Sounds fairly absent of any understanding of God’s goodness, huh?  So, I avoid writing about it and I try to wrestle through it until I have an answer for why this is my portion right now.  I haven’t figured out the why, yet, though.  My vision is blurred and my soul is weary. The current condition of my faith feels hopeless.

But that doesn’t mean I am without hope.

Beneath all the wavering, crumbling walls that I have built, and sometimes tried to tear down, is an immovable foundation, and I always feel it firmly under my feet.  And though there are so many ways in which my faith is small and the meditations of my heart need to be brought into submission to Christ, God is gracious enough to give me reminders of His goodness – a moment of inexplicable peace in my soul, songs that have been on my heart being sung during worship at church, knowing that other people hear God saying some of the same things I’ve been hearing Him say – reminders that aren’t answers to my current struggles, but that help me to remember that I matter to Him, and that He is faithful to complete the good work He has begun in me.

I have thought a lot in recent months about being hidden in Christ.  Lost.  Unable to find myself…after all “he that finds his life shall lose it, but he who loses his life for My sake shall find it”.  I have felt lost.  I have felt hidden.  I have struggled because I can’t seem to “find” myself.  But, today, I am wondering if I even know what this all means.  It has always sounded like a lofty, holy, noble goal to be hidden in Christ and only found in Him.

And I’m sure it is in God’s eyes.

But in my eyes?  It suddenly seems pretty lowly, humbling, lonely.  Even as I profess to desire this self-forsaken position, I fight with all I am against its fruition.  Not that I am near that fruition.  Hardly so.  But in seeing the beginning sacrifices, in feeling the initial lost-ness, I suddenly want to bring it to God and force Him to say there’s been some mistake – that this isn’t my intended portion, that this isn’t His provision for me in this moment.

In reality, I don’t want to lose myself.  As much as I don’t like who I am much of the time, there remains some self-centered core to my being that wants people to see me, and love me, and even judge me.  What happens if, one day, I cease to be seen?  What if, one day, the only thing anyone sees in me is Christ?  Okay, I know that is an impossible hypothetical…but is it supposed to scare me?  It’s not, right?  I’m supposed to yearn for that possibility.  Clearly, Christ is so infinitely better than me…why wouldn’t I want to be seen only as in Him?

I want to be loved for me, not for Christ in me.  The problem with that (aside from my obvious unloveability)?  God is not glorified when people see and love me.  If someone professes to see good in me, then I am somehow not portraying that none of that good is me, that it is all Christ.  I need to be hidden.  And I need to care only about how God sees me.  I need to find my life in Him alone.  His approval, His love, His acceptance – not anyone else’s – need to matter to me.  I realize there are times when this will need to be walked out in relationship with others – but I also have to be okay when it must be walked out in loneliness and obscurity.  When He wants me to be satisfied with Him, I can’t be seeking after other desires.  He needs to be my life, and my life needs to be His.

I think I need to learn to be myopic.  I guess from some perspectives, that might sound like a bad thing.  “Short-sighted” is not usually something said as a compliment.  Yet, I’m learning that there is benefit in only seeing what immediately surrounds you.  ‘Cause you can’t tell if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence if you can’t see the grass.  I need to not be seeing any grass but my own.  I need to realize that it doesn’t matter what someone else’s life looks like, because God didn’t call me to be someone else.

I won’t say that there aren’t good examples out there to learn from, but somehow, instead of gleaning, I tend to pile condemnation on myself and end up feeling pretty hopeless about my meager attempts to succeed at life.  So, for now, I need to just focus on what’s going on inside this house and this family.  After all, it’s not like I need to look at someone else to see areas that need improvement.  And maybe by not looking at others, I can filter out the “very necessary” from the “that would be nice”.  Maybe I can decide how life should look based on who we are instead of who someone else is.  Maybe I can start seeing the good, unique, and gifted aspects of who we are and realize those can (and should!) be different from what someone else can claim.  I guess we’ll see.

When disappointments come, I often see myself for who I really am….and I don’t like it.  At all.  See, I hate being disappointed.  I usually go out of my way to have unnecessarily low expectations so that they don’t go unmet.  That’s probably not the most mature way to avoid disappointment, but it’s what I do.

Yet, somehow, disappointments still come.  Shocking, I know.  And when they do, I become childish.  I feel like God has let me down, so I get angry at Him.  I feel like people have let me down, so I get angry at them.  And then I see how faithless and undone I have become by what is often something relatively insignificant, and I get angry at myself.  Is this the real fruit of my life?  Not the good spiritual fruit of Galatians 5, but all of the bad fruit that would indicate a bad “tree”?

I don’t know how to respond.  On one hand, I think I just need more discipline…somehow, I need to figure out how to keep silent, and have an eternal perspective, and respond in faith-filled, heartfelt prayer…but in my own strength.  On the other hand, I think I shouldn’t have to do this in my own strength.  I think God should be doing something to help me…shouldn’t He?  In either case, I feel pretty hopeless.  If it’s up to me, then I feel certain that I will always completely fail.  If it’s up to God, then I wonder why in the world He hasn’t helped me so far.  I’ve been a Christian for pretty much all of my life, but at these times, I feel like such a baby in my faith, and it discourages me.  It’s hard to even want to try anymore.

But I will.

I wonder if that’s part of the lesson for me.  Being faithful in the trying.  Recognizing, again, that who I am is not who I need to be and always yearning to be better, for Him.  I wish the changing came easily.  I wish I had a character that even slightly resembled Christ.  I wish I could understand why things just don’t seem to sink in.  I wish I was more than I am.  But, for now, I just need to cling to the truth that He is faithful to complete the good work He has begun in me…whether I think it’s my effort or His, ultimately, He is the one who has promised to accomplish it.

Sometimes, it’s hard to write about the things that are on my mind and heart.  Sometimes, they are just too random that I feel incapable of forming cohesive sentences.  Sometimes, they are too personal…revealing more of me than I would like.  Sometimes, I worry that I might offend someone.  But sometimes, I feel like I am about to burst if I don’t write something, so even if the words come out in a confusing, embarrassing, offensive mess, I write.  That’s what this post is today.

There’s a lot on my heart and mind right now.  There are wonderings of whether I am really doing all I can for God.  I mean, I’m sure the answer is no, but am I possibly doing worse than I imagine?  I don’t necessarily feel like God has called me to a lot of soapbox-type of ministering.  What I feel compelled to is more often the opposite…closed rooms, silent moments of kneeling before Him, pleading with Him, “standing in the gap” for people and circumstances, believing with all my heart that God hears and answers.  But is there more?  I wonder and examine my heart and motives.  I second guess myself.  I think about my fears and question if they are hindering me from something more.  You know what, though?  I have come to the conclusion that God knows me and He is faithful to me.  What I mean is, He is going to let me know what I need to know.  If I have to wonder or worry, chances are, whatever I am wondering or worrying about is not important.  If I am honestly seeking Him, He will help me with the rest.

I also have been thinking today about how God sees us when we are hypocritical…when we honor Him with our lips, but our hearts are far from Him.  If we come to Him with the right words, the right outward expressions, but with our own plans and purposes, might we offend Him?  I know that one version of 1Corinthians 13 says that love takes no offense, but it seems like there were times when God did take offense in the Bible…even if that wasn’t the word used.  To one of the churches in Revelation (pardon me for not looking it up at the moment), He said that He wished they were either hot or cold, but because they were lukewarm, He would spit them out of His mouth.  Sounds a lot like offense to me.  And the condition of that offense sounds a lot like many Christians today.  We’ve put God on our level.  We’ve made Him our friend and confidant.  We’ve counted our plans as being as good as His, as long as they seem good, even if we haven’t consulted Him on them.  We’ve decided that He wants us to come and sing at Him with smiles and clapping for exactly 20 minutes, and that He will feel worshiped.  What I think?  He would prefer silence over performance.  He would take a heartfelt “thank you” over a declaration shouted because that’s what everyone else is doing.  He would rather half as many people show up at a church service if it meant that the appeal would be found in Him and not in the “everything else”. I think He’s jealous for our time and attention and praise.  I think He’s waiting to be truly exalted, which by necessity, means we will be low in comparison…humbled.  I think He wants to be seen as more than a friend…I think He wants to be seen as holy.  Or maybe, more appropriately, HOLY…because He’s not like us. He is so much more, and He deserves everything we have to give, and more.