Monday, November 12, 2012

Clinging to the Creator

I've been doing a lot of soul searching and questioning recently.  My question to God always remain the same, over and over I ask, "Where are you leading me?" and I get brief glimpses, but I'm really not sure where my life is headed.  I cling to my creator.
  I've noticed that in times when I'm really lost, really wondering what is going on, I tend to cling extra hard. The music in my car changes from today's hit music to Newsboys and Aaron Schust, I search diligently for a decent Christian radio station.  Prayer time becomes not only necessary, but increasingly more frequent.  It's not enough to read scripture and pray once a day, I need it several times a day.  If I can go to a worship service, I do, and I fret on the days when there's not one available to me, wishing and hoping for community and guidance.  I just can't get enough.  I'm at one of those places right now, where I just want to take in Christ and find some sort of answer.  I search diligently for guidance, I long for it.  I can feel Christ's presence, but I can't find a firm answer. It's a weird mixture of comfort in the creator and dis-ease in my spirit.  I search, I hope, I long.  I wait.  And I wait.  I know the answer will not come tomorrow, I know it will not come the next day, so I cling with all my might to my creator, redeemer, and sustainer.  I cling, and I wait.
It's a hard lesson, learning to wait, learning to find comfort in the clinging.  I pray for some voice of revelation, something that will make my path clear and fill me with renewed vigor.  But right now, I must cling.  I must hope.  I must search. Someday my path will be made clear, but it will not be today. It will not be tomorrow.  It may not even be next week, next month or next year. I must simply learn to use all my spiritual tools to cling to my creator, for I am not abandoned, my prayers are heard, they are simply answered with, "Patience my child, cling a little longer."

Monday, November 5, 2012

Patterns and Well Worn Tapes

I've been spending a great deal of time around the monk house recently, and I've noticed my old thought patterns have started to pop up.  Pulling up to the house today, I thought, "Maybe I'm spending too much time here...Maybe they don't really like me that much...Maybe I'm a burden to them..." Thoughts like this were once part of my daily life, something that even a year ago would keep me from asking a friend to hang out or going to an event.  They were never debilitating thoughts, I still had friends and connections, but I would never spend more than a few hours a week with any given person.
Now I'm spending quite a bit of time  around the same people, and the thought patterns have started playing again in my mind. They are the well worn tapes of a person who spent a good chunk of their life distrusting their self. I don't pay them much credence anymore, but they still echo in the back of my mind.
I wonder what it would be like if they were not there.  Who would I have been closer to if it were not for these tapes? How would my life be different?  But then I realize that there is nothing wrong with my life now, that I have been brought by the grace of God to the place I need to be.   I just have to keep remembering that the tapes of my yester-years are not the tapes I choose to play today.  They echo, but they do not define.  Instead I set my life to a new tune, a new tape that I hope to etch into my brain, "You're a good person.  Trust yourself."