When God Is The Teacher ...

The last five months have been one blow below the belt after another. I feel that when God has something to tell me, He leaves no stone unturned - He shreds every part of who He created me to be. The last five months have been part by part destruction, a break-down component by component. When creating a character, I break down a character into six parts - the physical, the emotional, the intellectual, the relational, the sexual, and the spiritual. I pondered through how every part of my character was in the process of being affected - my physical well-being (my health is slipping, weight is returning), my emotional well-being (I'm increasingly more unhappy, more quick to anger, more agitated with living with dad), my intellectual well-being (I hunger for thinking, for learning, for growing and can seem to find no one to enter into this dialogue with me, no one - save one), my relational well-being (if mom were alive right now, she would be glad, for she would have achieved what she always wanted. Me ... without friends. I have never felt this lonely before. I've never felt this alone before), my sexual well-being (I've always been ok with my single-hood, always looked at the blessings therein and not what I was missing out on, but more and more, I was coming to the conclusion that there was an aspect of myself that was completely foreign, completely unknown to me - that part of me that is discovered only in the context of an intimate relationship, that part of me that opens to absolute, complete vunerability with another) ... and, in this entry, my spiritual well-being was still intact. I was grateful to God for keeping that solid. With that, I knew I could find the strength to get through the rest - somehow, I didn't know, but somehow I could.

About a week ago, my spiritual strength took a hit. I had never found a community of faith where I felt so inspired, so challenged, so strengthened. I had never encountered a minister that could make me cry, make me seek, make me long for a relationship with God in Christ that I had known in my heart was possible, but never 'saw' it. This minister did - and his affect on everyone that heard him (well, almost) was profound. God used this man like few others. But this month brought him crashing down - as only the sin of humanity can do. Infidelity.

I am still reeling from this; I still sit in stunned silence. I still don't know what to think or what my response will reveal about me. Did I idolize him? I don't think so .. but my first thought when I heard without the specifics was that now there was no need for me to continue attending that church. I don't know ... I really don't know ...

Do I blame God for this? I hope not ... I do want to think that He is with me, that all this has a good result somewhere at some time. But I'm just getting so very very tired ... so tired.

So alone.

I remember once asking a group of people how they would be different if someone proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was no God, that the Good News was non-existant. I believed (believe?) that if God had called me, regardless of what man proved, that God's drawing me into His presence would continue and that I would continue to be His. Regardless of my human doubts right now, please God, keep my faith strong. If I don't understand it, I don't want it to waver. Even when You are silent, even when I am weak, keep me in the palm of Your hand.