Facing reality

I have never been good with words. I have never been good with thoughts. I have never been good with emotions. I have never been good at expressing myself. I have never been good with creating anything, only learning what others have created. I’m a learner. That’s about it. I don’t have long conversations in my head. I get caught up on a certain sentence in my head and it plays in continual loops. I can’t really think anything completely through, because I’m not creative enough to think of everything. Prayer is wasted time for me, because I never know what I’m supposed to say and it all sounds so forced. I can only piggyback off of what has been taught to me. I’m a born listener. If I give advice, it’s only because I picked up on a catchy saying somewhere down the line. To tell you the truth, it’s frustrating. I feel like a small sponge sitting in the middle of a vast ocean. So much life going on around me and I can’t do anything for myself. The only thing I can do is ask questions and that becomes burdensome for most people. My mom always told me that around thirty I would start to find out who I really am. I don’t know if this is completely that point in my life, but there is a definite reality check happening right now. I know I need to be answering some questions, but to tell you the truth it’s only a feeling I have. I don’t know what I’m supposed to answer. I do know that my conscious is being torn apart about my faith. Do I believe in God or not? It’s haunting me. Every time I turn around that question eats away at my stomach and guilt runs wild. I’m struggling with the idea of who God is. He has never told me. Instead I’m left to just guess and frankly it kind of pisses me off. I have never been good at this. He certainly doesn’t seem to be helping. Now granted, since I have asked him to answer me a lot of information has come my way proving that Christ could very reasonably be God. But on the other side of the coin, I was looking for this information. I could have found any answer I wanted in the vast library of opinions. But I stuck with what felt more comfortable to me. I have claimed to be a Christian for a while now. In fact I find myself willing to debate with almost anyone on “truth.” It’s a big question and I want to know the answer! I think my anger stems from this idea. I feel plagued with the desire to know. I just want to know for sure. But God doesn’t want me to know for sure. I feel very angry, why bully me around? Why torment me with simple games? Why remain so quite? Because it takes faith to believe, I am always questioning my faith. So I think it’s time for me to quit playing on the fence and decide which side to land on. Here’s my choice: Irrational self-justification or a seemingly absent God. My heart tells me that I will pick God in the end, but my head tells me that God has let me down. I don’t know when I’ll find an answer. I don’t know if I’ll find an answer. But I do know that I can listen. So here’s my new mission inspired by the current book I reading (AJ Jacobs "one year of living biblically"). I will go through the motions. I will try to listen to God, his way. Until I have finished my semester left of school I will go through the motions. So here’s the deal:

1. No tobacco, alcohol, lust.
2. In the morning before anything else, I will read some of my bible.
3. I will commit to praying or journaling daily.
4. I will keep a log of my failures, accessible to anyone who wants to know.