My Lenten Journey: Hello from the bottom of the well and other places dark and stormy

For a few weeks I have been living from the bottom of the well. Dark and cold and way way down.

Being at the bottom of the well is not a new experience... I've been here before. Been there before. Maybe I am feeling some kind of way because Spring hasn't fully arrived. Or all the upheaval change going on in my life. Or the gaping aloneness that is crippling and I can't seem to remedy. I just know I am in the thick of it during this contemplative Lenten season. Although I must say I don't feel very contemplative. I feel very hollow. Very much adrift. Not a new feeling. I've been adrift before. Yup.

What I know to do, is just keep moving forward. Even in the pitch blackness of any day... I just move forward... Move through... Move.

I take that to mean that love is still the only true revolution...Of self and country. I possess a great capacity for love; it is stunning the depths of it. The height of it and breadth of it. And yet, I am a woman not in love... Well, if you don't count being in love with the world.

I've been at this life a long time now, I am not easily broken. I do however get very tired, and in that tiredness I lose sight of God's grace. God is at the bottom of the well with me. I know this now, as I have known this before. Wherever I am, so is God... Expansive and grand and deliberate. How can I forget this? Well, when you are free falling backwards down the well, God is not the first thought believe it or not. It's not just the bottom of the well. It's an empty king-sized bed, or attending galas unattached, or activities on your own all the time.  It is the end of a day and no one there to say hey, I did this... Or that...  It is the kind of aloneness that feels like a crushing punishment. And You are acutely aware of time running past you. It's knowing that "happily-ever-after" is not for you.

Hello from the bottom of the well and other places dark and stormy... Where is the light?

I know where the light is. The light is brightest in the faces of my friends who tend to me. It is the sound of laughter from my children unaware of my pain. It is the work I do on behalf of (insert cause and or organization). I have to keep lighting the candle myself. I am responsible for the light inside of me. I am responsible for my life on earth in God's care.

Standing in the bottom of the well, all I have to do is look up. Just look up.

Off The Lenten Path: God is Tired Of Me. I am Tired Of God.

For the better part of my life I have enjoyed and struggled with a strong God consciousness. I have never felt alone or away from God. In my life I have endured and come through some dark moments with my faith still intact. I could feel God's presence. Always.

Today, I am quitting God. This aloneness and desolation is more than I can stand. I believe God has grown tired of me. My prayers are mumblings of things no longer believed. There is a tiredness in my spirit and in my soul that plagues me. I am unrecognizable in my prayers. My voice is unrecognizable in my prayers. I have been standing on sinking ground for a very long time... For years. Grasping and grappling with God's grace. Trying to move forward in the face of loss and heartbreak. No, I do not wish that others ought to suffer in my stead. I accept my suffering... I have brought the bulk of it on myself. I do not ask why me? I do not ask why not me? I have come to accept the suffering as a part of the joy.

I have been lost before and have found my way. I have been sad many times before and have put my feet upon the path leading back to God. Not this time. This time I just want to be left alone.

I am quitting God for so many reasons that I wouldn't live long enough to say. I am quitting God mostly because, God is tired of me. I know this. I feel this.

My life is full of things I need to do to sustain my commitment of raising children and maintain employment. That is all there is. There is work and work.  Everything feels like a chore. Even the places of joy and happiness feel like chores. My breath feels like a chore. Even as I am sitting here grasping for the words to not feel so ungrateful for the life and the blessings I have enjoyed feels like a chore. Burdens that seem unending and relentless are suffocating my life.

I am screaming in my prayers. I am screaming in my conversations with people. I am screaming when I have to deal with one more avalanche of troubles. I am always screaming even when I am sitting and singing in church. I am screaming everytime I get on the scale. I am screaming every time I have to figure out what to do next. I am screaming nonstop and it is killing me.

I know I do not have the right to this kind of ungrateful purging. I feel ashamed with each letter I type. This is the truth I am standing in... Drowning in. I still marvel at the bigness of God. I am in awe of God in the big and small spaces everywhere I go. And I know my quitting God does not affect the sunrise or sunset anywhere in the world.

God is tired of me. I am tired of God.

My Lenten Journey: I am the Big Space of God

I was struggling with whether or not I should even "do Lent" this year. My mood was such that I just didn't feel holy, or sacred or divine. The world just seems crazy and I seem crazy in it. My attitude was piss poor and I was feeling quite desolate. More than just tired and annoyed and grumpy. Truly desolate. Wondering if this was indeed my dark night of my soul. My minister read my last blog post and invited me to not miss last Sunday's sermon. So I didn't miss it. My mind got back "stayed on Jesus" But in the days after that I begin to feel my whole self in all spaces I was in.

I have been struggling with weight for a while now. Hate. Acceptance. Hate. Acceptance. Hate. Diet. New Diet. Yet another diet. I know better. But I got to thinking about my bigness. Not just in size, but in the scope of how I am in the world. I take up a lot of space...Physically and energetically. My presence is known whenever and wherever I show up anywhere. I am seen and heard.

So when I talk about weight and losing weight, maybe I am saying that I wish I wasn't so big in the world... My world. I wish I could go unnoticed. Quietly move about this life. And then it hit me. God did not design me for smallness. And he certainly hasn't called me to do small things. And that the space I take up, is the big space of God. So the madness about losing weight shifts into something other than wanting to be small. It becomes about being the best vessel to hold God and God's message.

This is the tone for my lenten journey. Explore the big space of God that I am. For the next 40 days I will look where I am big in spaces and celebrate that. To see where I am my most brightest and shine brighter, not dim down.  To notice where my laugh is the biggest and loudest and add more of that to my everyday practical life. To spend time with people who are big in their lives, in their thinking and in their positive contributions to each other and to the earth

I've played small. I've tried being small. I have been small. I have sought God in the smallest of smallest places for refuge and solace. Now I am seeking God in the big spaces. I am going to see where my big spaces are and stand in them and be with God. Be with God in the big spaces. I am indeed, the big space of God.

Amen.

Preparing For My Lenten Journey 2017...Do I even want to do Lent?

For the last decade or more, I have been "into" Lent. Embracing this holy time to reconnect to my own internal faith walk. Seeking silence and solitude. Welcoming this time of 40+ days and 40+ nights to get in with God.

This year, though, I am feeling disconnected from this holy season. I do not want to be the church, or go to church or be in church. I am weary. And I am tired of people. I am tired of prayers. I am tired of longing and discontent. This is not my dark night of the soul... This seems more petty and less deep. 

Or maybe it is my dark night of the soul and I need to claim it as such. It's not lost on me that I am feeling this unsettledness and sadness now. Lent is looming. I know it, because I am programmed for it. Something deep inside is seeking a new message in spite of my lamentations.

Do I have the courage to seek the new message? What am I hoping to hear? What am I hoping will be a new God is still speaking message for me?

Will I allow myself to go back through my faith journey and rediscover newness in the studies of spiritual direction?  Am I falling into a jaded sense of the world and my place in it? Am I suffering from "almost and not quite"?  And, God when will I stop being on the losing end of everything? Or so it feels like I am. Yes, I see. Contemplative time and time for discernment is beckoning.

Lent is coming. Am I doing Lent this year? Ash Wednesday is next week. I remain open to the spirit of God moving through in and throughout my being. In other words, we shall see.