Make it stop!

Look guys, I’m not sure I can just keep sharing all this stuff.  It gets pretty embarrassing.  Well, anyway, the saga continues below . . .

August 31, 1997

     Where do I start? Life is a struggle for me.  My desires are so obvious . . . finally.  Oh, golly! Is it wrong that I’m so much happier with Faith than without her?  I know that God should be my joy, but if she makes me happy is it because He doesn’t?  I don’t think so.  We had such a good time together tonight.  She is so precious to me.  I certainly don’t need any lightning or thunder, but there is another Man [i.e. God] in her life.  I really don’t want to live my life looking forward to the next time I see her.  It is very painful that way.  But, maybe I’m supposed to.

     Oh God, make her fall in love with me!  I can’t believe I let her get to me like this so soon.  I love her and that is kind of frustrating right now.  I’ll talk to her via phone tomorrow, but you can’t hug a phone [okay, really wanted to edit that part out].  I wish I would have held her more when she wanted me to. 

     It’s official:  I’m a sap.  I wonder if she’ll ever read this?  Ha!  She doesn’t know how scary.

     Yeah, so, really thought about skipping this entry.  I mean, I was totally losing it by this point in my relationship with Faith.  She was just very unclear about her intentions with me and I was just very “in love” with her.  And if you’ve ever been in that situation before, you know how crappy it can feel. 

     One thing I remember about this time was that I had been trying very hard not to just write everything I was feeling in my journal—there was to be no “diary-diarrhea” for me.  I was afraid of going back years later and being embarrassed.  You know, like how I feel today.  What’s interesting to me about that is that at age 19, I had an awareness of the fact that with life experience would come perspective.  That, however emotional I was feeling at the time, I would see things at least somewhat differently when I was 25 or 30 or 40.  I seemed to have an underlying belief that I really didn’t know everything or have all the answers.  This, of course, isn’t to say that everything always gets clearer with age or that you can’t really know anything with confidence in your youth.  But in those days, what it meant for me was that I had at least some degree of humility regarding my thought life.  I can see that in the entry above.  I was questioning and wondering, not just proclaiming things as undeniable fact.  Acknowledging my certainty, sure, but also my uncertainty.   

     I think there is something to that.  I think it is important for me still today to recognize that age and experience will continue to impact and shape me.  That when I’m 50, I will think differently about some things than I do now.  Maybe about parenting or politics or whatever.  Still, I have to act with conviction now.  That being the case, I find myself driven to the Bible because I know the foundation there is solid and unchanging.  If I can let the Bible inform my life, my values, my behavior, my decisions – I can act with true confidence.  But I also must act with humility.  Not the false humility of our age that foolishly suggests that all truth is relative and nothing can truly be known – that’s just silly.  Rather, a true humility that acknowledges my real limitations – my age, my culture, my experience, my language, etc. 

     I wonder if that makes any sense.  Especially if you are dealing with some very tangible hurt – a break up, an addiction, a crisis of belief, family struggles, a disease, or something else.  I guess I just think about the confusion, the desperation, the hopelessness that one can feel in those times.  I’ve been there.  And the humility that I’m really talking about is a kind that says, “Just because I can’t figure out what the answers are right now, doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.”  It is this kind of humility that can drive us to the Bible, to an older man or woman of God who can speak into our lives, to a community of faith that can surround us with love and wisdom, truth and Jesus.  And that is exactly where we need to be.