Journal in the Raw

The journal on the couch next to me here is bulging, as per usual, with scribbles, notes, feelings, complaints, laments, swells of happy, joyous, miserable, unmanageable life. I never fix it up. I want to remember my days however they are, however they feel. I don’t make my journal palatable for anyone else because it is only mine, and if it is ever read by anyone else, it will probably be in those days when I am long gone.

Why am I most honest in secret, I wonder? Why is the inner hashing of heart, soul, mind and spirit kept… always kept away and hidden? Is real me not presentable? Sometimes she isn’t. When a morsel is held in the light of this online page, it is always worked out, fixed up and ready for viewing. From now on, and just once in awhile (or maybe more), I’m coming like this, with a journal in the raw because we are in this together and I don’t want my body of notes here to only be the pretty notes any longer. Life just isn’t always pretty.

Yesterday I walked down the aisle in the beloved sanctuary I keep coming back to week after week. I go because my friends are there, my spiritual family and the ones who lead us bring a feast to us to share in songs, testimony, teaching. They give place for all the “spiritual gifts” in each of us to exercise together. We love on one another, we chat, we make plans, we hug, we reconnect after a week apart.

I walked down the aisle when our pastor invited us to come, but I felt carried down the aisle in a river’s flow. I hadn’t thought it through, had not qualified the reason I went. I just went. He said come to repent for the nation, for ourselves, just come. He said come, lay down to God our distraction, or our sin, and/or other loves that so easily can entangle our hearts and bind us to earth. It ain’t pretty. It isn’t fixed up for viewing, and I’m thinking of that walk to the altar now with an empty-like longing for more. I don’t think that’s how I should feel, yet I do. I don’t like this season in my life where nothing comes easily to me; not gratefulness, not peacefulness, not happiness, not emotional control, not trust, not hope, nor the feeling of deep purpose that I had enjoyed for a very long time.

I find myself, like David, crying out to God–it’s not whimsy, it’s brutal. It’s not spiritual, not lovely, not ready for viewing. It is ugly, loud, questioning, angry and disappointed sometimes. I know the final answer already; that He is my God, totally trustworthy and true, ready to meet my every need, God of understanding, but all my feelings and faculties only cling like a desperate person. My hold feels like the last finger on the cliff’s edge during a wild, wet, and dangerous storm. “There is more in God”, I heard Francis Chan say this morning. Well then, “I must have more”, I anguished because what I have is just not enough anymore. It’s that pesky tension between the present experience and the future hope. It’s not a lovely, poetic, spiritual notion that I want more of God. I find that desperation demands more of God. Misery cries out for satisfaction. Is this a good thing? I’ve heard it is, but please don’t say that to me right now. 🙂

So, at the altar yesterday, the tears dropped from my eyes onto my hands and my knees and I shook and I don’t know why. My whole body felt engulfed in a flame that didn’t hurt or singe me. There were many others around me, kneeling, desperate too, I think. Eventually, I walked back to my seat and had no profound thoughts, couldn’t file the experience anywhere inside me yet. I put on my coat, grabbed my purse and left to meet a friend for lunch.

I know God is enough! And I know if someone has fallen behind, it is not God’s fault. He is the bedrock that I stand asking these questions on, having my laments upon, resting all my cards on. The anchor holds even through all of this, I know. I really do know though I can’t feel it. I’m learning there are just going to be times we don’t “feel it”.

Now don’t send a card, or worry, or call to check on me. 🙂 Just sit here with me and let’s feel our humanity before God together, ok? Let’s fight to go deeper, to find the treasures of our “first love”, Jesus. Let’s love and regard one another in our personal, private journeys and lock our arms together in our prayers to say, “We will see the goodness of God in the land of living.” Let’s just say out loud that we trust Him, no matter how we feel or what we see right now. He is going “to do more than we can ask or imagine”. I know this because He said so.

When I was leaving for home yesterday, a note came in messenger. The Lord had shared a word for me with a friend. He had missed me at the meeting, but would call me later on. When Kevin’s kind voice spoke the words, they came with an extra layer of wonder to me. The first time God ever spoke to me like this, through the prophetic word, I was 22 years old, living away from home at a school to disciple new Christians. A stranger had approached me after church and spoke these words of hope. And now, these years later, it’s the same message and with the same kindness that I hear again,

“Spring is coming.”

And thank God! I’m ready for spring.