Treasures of Darkness

So, my husband needs to have a colonoscopy tomorrow, and so I spent last night going through his paperwork. 

You wanna turn anyone into a pessimist?  Have them read the consent forms for any basic medical procedure.  It’s not enough that you are stressed and anxious about what the test might find.  Nope, they need to throw in there that the test itself might cause paralysis, brain damage or death.

Gee, where can I sign up?

Continuing with my exploration of the reasons why I avoid God, I come to #2 on the list:

 It often all seems too good to be true, and so I use the distance to protect myself, while I search for the catch.

This has actually been on my mind a lot for the past couple days, as a friend of mine seems to consider it his personal duty to convince me that God is great and He loves me, and just wants to have a relationship with me.

 I find myself reacting to it all so cynically, as in “that’s great in theory, but experience tells me otherwise”.   I mean, that’s what they told me in the beginning.  That’s the line that got me hooked, got me hungry for more.  It seemed like the ultimate deal; forgiveness for all my sins AND an “in” with the ultimate being in the universe, and the only thing that I had to do, was accept that He was who He was, and that He had done what He had done.

I was all like “where can I sign up?”  But almost immediately, the performed the old bait and switch.  I had signed the contract, but didn’t read the fine print, which was soon revealed to me in a series of increasingly strict rules.  And even though one of the rules was getting other people to sign the contract, I found that I just couldn’t sentence them to the prison I had somehow entered voluntarily.

Finally one day, I realized that there was just no way that I could keep my end of the contract, and gave up.  Part of me holds out hope that the contract wasn’t legally binding, and that I still have hope of heaven, but other times, that too, seems too good to be true.

I decided that I wanted to keep my weight blogging somewhat separate from my faith blogging.  The weight loss blog can be found here:

http://theliquidcell.com/thefatgirl/

I read this yesterday and was struck at how fitting this is, both to what I am going through in my own life, but also that of my friend breaking free.

I came across it in “Encounters with Merton” by Henri J.M. Nouwen, but included his references at the bottom. 

Merton’s Prayer

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me, I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.  (Thoughts in Solitude, Thomas Merton, 81)

About a month ago I received a belated birthday card from a friend of mine, who happens to be my only close friend who is still a conservative member of the UPC.  I have been meaning to write her a quick email to thank her for the card, but I keep putting it off.  The truth is, I have no idea what to say.

We have only had 2 conversations since I saw her in person in May.  The first a few weeks after my visit, when I shared with her my decision to leave the UPC.  The second was about a month and half after that.  A quick call to assure me that she has been really busy and didn’t want me to think that the reason I hadn’t heard from her was due to what I shared in our last conversation.  As she is in the midst of opening up her new business, I knew she was really busy.

The thing that is so difficult for me is that the changes that have occured in me during the last 3 months are quite vast, and I don’t know how to reiterate that.  I don’t even know if I need to.  I could always sidestep the topic entirely, but eventually she is going to come face to face with the person I have become.

I (as some of you are already aware of, and most likely frustrated by) have difficulty in not being completely straightforward and blunt.  I have come to equate what consider tact, with pretense.  I spent such a long time trying to be something I wasn’t, and trying to maintain a mask, that I absolutely refuse to do it now.   Hence I feel this incessent need to metaphorically proclaim “This is who I am, love me or hate me, approve or disapprove, this is me, and I will be nothing else”.

Therefore, I feel the constant need to educate people as to what I think and believe. Which is one of the main reasons I no longer post much at the forums I used to frequent, I can’t stand to have people think that I am still the person that I used to be.  Maybe its just that I had my identity defined for me for so long, that I am just really feel the need to define it for myself.