On Faith

This is my last weekend without coffee. Wow. I am so glad that it's almost over!! I was just thinking how a nice, steaming cup of coffee would be right now, as I sit and write...

I decided to give up coffee for Lent, on the recommendation of a friend. She had explained the tradition and the symbolism in such a way that it seemed irresistable... at the time. And so I made the committment, and began the sufferring... a whole week early! =] Not intentional. So I've been off coffee for a good long while here, and I miss it terribly. But I think I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. And now I think I can take a moment and be proud of myself, because I've almost made it! But it definitely wasn't easy. Coffee has long been my stress relief, and I've needed it this month. It has been a very rough month.

A lot of people have said that I've been negative lately. And I don't doubt it. The truth is I am overwhelmed, and so many things are out of my control, and I don't know what to do anymore. I have felt the flood waters rising up around my face, and I think it's only natural to panic a bit when you believe you're about to drown...

I have never really understood what we're supposed to be doing here, on Earth. I thought I was writing a story, but I've become angry lately at the story I seem to have been given. I feel like when I was ten years old and they got me that bike for Christmas... I'd had in my head that it was the purple bike with the sparkles that I'd asked for, and I was equally convinced that that particular bike and I would form a unique bond and that the two of us together created the right ingredients for magic. Like Harry Potter's wand that chose him. I knew that if I only had that bike, that I could fly... I truly believed it.

Then Christmas morning rolled around... but it was a pink bike with lolipops on it that greeted me. And that bike never let me fly. It was just a bike, and I was just a girl, and there was no magic. Now, in reality, did the pink bike do everything the purple bike would have? Probably, yes. But the believing nature in me isn't 100% convinced that the purple bike with sparkles wouldn't have been able to lead me to worlds unknown... even today I'm not fully convinced of the reality of the situation.

That is perhaps one of my greatest strengths and biggest downfalls. I have been accused of not having enough faith, but it is not the truth. The truth is that I have too much faith, but in the wrong things. I will believe something longer and deeper and more stubbornly than most people could ever fathom, much less act upon. Perhaps God gave me such a measure of faith to be a writer with, and the tragedy of it is, He's also had to watch me fall time and time again because I never turn that belief back around to him. I'll give it to some guy, or some cause, or some ridiculous notion, and then get devastated by "reality," all the while becoming less likely to trust the only one who is actually trustworthy...

So far it has been a deadly cycle. And a lot of things that I had been hoping in have fallen apart lately... so it's going to be even harder to resurrect what's left of my trusting heart.

So have I been negative lately? Probably. But that's just the tip of the iceberg, the warning that things really aren't okay under all this water... that my limbs have been growing weary for some time and that I won't be able to hold myself up for much longer... This is nothing new to me, so I am surprised to see a new group of people reacting so strongly to it. I guess this is just the first time some of them have recognized this particular struggle of mine... of having faith in everything but God.

There is much more to say, but I have a lot to do today, and I just needed to get some of this out of my thoughts. It's a process, this growing to trust God. I would love for it to be more of an instantaneous transformation, but it seems to be a long, slow process instead. So I guess there's nothing I can do except take the next step along the way.