Over two and a half months ago (I am very very behind on this blog and thus am having to sum up multiple weeks within a few posts. A lot has been happening that I did not want to relive by retelling it to you and I apologize. But now I will catch up and will be better about posting), I lay in bed, cuddled up in my covers crying, holding onto a stone that said "pray" between my clasped hands- desperately needing to feel God.
A number of things had occurred and weighed on my spirit to bring me to this point, some of which I had already chronicled: being fragile in spirit after a period of exhaustion and burn out and some questioning about major spiritual matters.
Additionally, I was continually undergoing the stress and sadness of my mother's continuing illness and it just seemed as though the storms just kept coming, waves just kept surging, pounding over me before I could get my head above water and gasp for breath.
I had also been in a theoretical foundations (the foundations of behavior analysis) class for grad school that for some reason, shook me up. We spent the first few classes discussing Christianity vs. science as behavior analysis' basic principles are often in conflict with major christian ideas (phenomenology, assumption of first-cause theory, evolution, etc). While many of the arguments brought up by my atheist professor were ones I could easily counter, the general ideas brought up threw me off. I began trying to view the world in an atheistic, phenomenological way, just to see if I could do it- trying to understand how my professor, my colleagues view it. I'd try to look at the trees moving in the wind just as they were, seeing no driving force behind any of it but a series of cause and effects.
Here's the thing about being an atheist:I'm bad at it. Trying to view the world this way depressed me terribly. I felt like I was grieving a loss of a loved one- and in a way, I was. For more on this see Week 39
All of this nudged me to question things and on top of that, I just went through a period of a questioning nature- doubting the legitimacy of some scripture, and more than the legitimacy, doubting what it was truly intended for. I began to question so many basic assumptions Christians base so much off of as potential culturally influenced phenomena. The idea of taking so much scripture literally (in addition to figuratively) for example became an issue. I began to look at the potential sources of texts and wondered how we could see Genesis as some kind of actual account. To me, it seemed to be some written account of a folk tale, and oral tradition (of course this ignores God's power over what goes into His Holy, living, word, but I ignored a lot of things during this period). Perhaps the most dangerous and frightening thing I questioned was God's love for me. I wanted proof. So much of faith and religion is skewed by our cultural view of things. We reiterate over and over that "God is Love" as a mantra. Why not just echo, "God is a Jealous God?" Because it's not as suitable for us? It doesn't comfort us as much even if it's equally as true. I found we focused so much on Love in our society that perhaps we had skewed God's personality more in one direction to suit our needs (and I still think I'm onto something there, although now I do believe He loves me). On top of this, I wanted scriptural proof. "WHERE DOES GOD SAY HE LOVES ME, TELL ME WHERE?!" I demanded of my friend, so angry that I was swearing like a truck driver, throwing the F-word in between most of the words in caps above. I don't think I've ever sworn that much at God or in reference to God in my life (perhaps the proof to my doubt that he loves me was in that lightning didn't strike me then and there).
I was dismayed that I even found myself asking this question, and even more to my dismay, my friend did not have an answer for me. Well, she did- she could mention lots of scripture that alluded to actions that showed God loved me or that he loved people. But God never said right out that he loved me and when he came out and expressed love for a people, it was his Chosen people of Israel, etc. It was never for someone like me.
At least in my mind at this point, it wasn't. I didn't want action, I didn't want some (seemingly) round-about way of showing His love. I wanted the very human, earth-bound, potentially meaningless, word love. As if that stood as proof of His love for me far more than Jesus' dying for my sins.
Nonetheless, I found that I had questions buzzing around my head that I could not turn off. I'm too philosophical to just stop thinking things because they're unpleasant. I have to reason and think my way out of them. Thus, I found myself lying in bed crying one night, realizing I was at some kind of potential "final precipice." I was questioning the foundations of my faith- whether God loves me, the legitimacy of the scripture that I relied on as truth, and so many other fundamental issues relating to those two primary ones. I could not manage to think my way out of some of these issues- at least at some level- at least at the level I want to think my way out of them (on a human, selfish, very naive mortal level).
So there I lay, realizing how dangerous this was and feeling as if I was losing God. It was the kind of feeling you have when you're in the process of/on the verge of breaking up with someone and you feel as though you're desperately clinging to something that you can't figure out how to work out. The feeling that this thing you are trying to save is, despite your attempts, still slipping from your grip.
And really, in my mind, this is what I was doing. I had fought with and sworn at God and now I was breaking up with him. Only, I didn't want to. I just didn't see how I couldn't. I felt as though my mind were divorcing (perhaps this is the better word than breaking up given the nature of our relationship) God, my spirit did not want to. And of course, God was not at all divorcing me- it was as if my human self was working against my will to pull me away from Him. And yet, there was a part of me that could not fully- that knew something my brain didn't. So there I lay, in some hellish limbo that threatened the loss of everything.
In desperation that night I bought some Christian music I had not listened to since I listened to KLOVE, a radio station that plays all over- but that I cannot get in MA. I used to listen to it to and from student teaching in WI and it was a big part of my spiritual growth during that time. So, I found some familiar tunes and bought the Switchfoot Album, "Hello, Hurricane." A song I had never heard, "yet" began to play, a song that seemed to have been custom-written for this exact moment in my life. It discussed losing ground, heading toward the final precipice, losing sight of God, on the verge of moving far from him, and then it says, "but you haven't lost me yet."
I curled up in my blankets and let the truth of this song wash over me, let it be my sad anthem. Let myself wallow in it. I felt my heart breaking, I was losing the love of my Life.
And then came the line- wrenched out of the lead singer's gut, "If it doesn't break, if it doesn't break, if it doesn't break your heart then it's not love, naww, if it doesn't break your heart it's not enough. It's when it's really breakin' down with your insides coming out that you really know what your heart is made of"
It was then that it occurred to me- that whatever this was between me and God, it must be love because otherwise it wouldn't have broken my heart.
Not only that, but for such a long time, there had been two primary issues in my spiritual growth. One being that I hadn't been loving God enough- here I was feeling rightfully distraught and more upset that I had been in a very long time about the idea of some kind of a loss of God. This was good- I had never loved God like this before. This was, in fact, the entire point of my 70 DAYS- to love God better. Lo and behold- prayers are answered. It's amazing, when faced with difficult circumstances, the reassuring and comforting things you find- the part of yourself you come to find.
The second issue being that I often said, when discussing major Christian concepts/principals, that I knew things in my head, not in my heart and thus could not "walk the walk" or truly understand them. This time my head did not know what to think and no matter how confused it became, no matter how all the darkness that had filled my life all winter/spring tried to use my thoughts, my mind to break down my spirit- it could only go so far. As much as I like to think thought/reason/logic are such powerful things, they hit a wall that they could not push beyond. They hit some kind of fortress in my spirit that had been building up without my realizing it.
What I found was that I knew all of these things- I knew God loved me- in my heart, even if I didn't know it in my head at the time. And that is much better than the opposite alternative.
Later that week I ran at Chauncy Lake on a stormy day, Switchfoot blasting in my ears- this time it was the song, "Hello Hurricane." The clouds hung menacingly (although what could they do? Pour reviving, forgiving water on me?) My feet pounded angrily to the beat- a righteous anger at evil- and yet, a triumphant anger.
Darkness had taken so many forms, trying to pull me away from God those past few months and it found a wall it could not penetrate- It found the walls of my heart- a heart that has deep roots now, that knows God loves me- by His billions of actions, by what He's written on my heart, not just a certain string of words.
"Hello Hurricane," I sang to all the darkness in the woods that could hear me, to the stones, the rocky trail I trampled under my feet,
"You're not enough.
Hello hurricane, you can't silence my love.
I've got doors and windows boarded up
All your dead end fury is not enough
You can't silence my love, my love."
