Well, as I have shared in previous blogs, my struggle with faith continues. However this past week something began to take shape. Something I am not familiar with. Something I had no idea I lacked until recently. That something is called Hope. Who would know that at 57, instead of being filled with wisdom and a life of peace and contentment, I would instead be on an adventure filled with so many, I would never have believed this could happen!
It starts out sad really and I will share how it came about. But first I have to be honest and tell you I am scared out of my mind to share this experience. But I promised myself and readers (should any begin to show up), that I would be open and honest on my journey as a woman first, a senior citizen second, who DOES NOT have it all together.
I have to share a first before I get too serious. Last week we had our company party and I can check off another "I wish I could do that" and say instead, I can't believe I did that! I got up and sang Tina Turner's Proud Mary with my husband as back up singer. No we were not drunk. But I was counting on everyone else in the room to be, let me just say. Anyway, I did her dance like I remembered years ago. Surprise! My boss couldn't believe it and couldn't stop telling me how good I was and how people kept coming up to her and asking if she knew I could sing that good. (I know, they were all drunk, but let me have my moment). It was the best night in a long time. The first time I had so much fun in a long time. I was beaming as I limped to our hotel room. The aches and pains in my joints was worth the feeling of accomplishment and pride I felt for the first time in years. My husband was such a good sport and I knew he had my back that night. Anyway, back to the important message I believe God was trying to convey to me this week.
I was getting ready for bed and without anything triggering these thoughts they just started popping into my head. Here they are:
I want to be a child protected by her father, a father who adores me. A father who calls me his little princess, his most cherished angel. Or the little girl sitting on her daddy's lap and as she reads her first words from a story book she smiles as he says, "you are such a smart little girl, I am so proud."
I want to be a little girl who knows what it is like to be able to run into her daddy's arms after falling off her bike because she knows he will hug her close and let her know it will be ok, he will fix her cuts and help her try again.
I want to be the young teenager going on her first date and having her dad's protective arm around her as he warns the young man "you take care of my little girl, keep her safe." or the young woman who see's the shimmer of tears in her father's eyes as she heads off to college. Again hearing him choke back the tears as he tells her "I am just a phone call away. I am so proud of you."
And last, I want to be that young woman whose father reminds her the night before her wedding, "I will always be your daddy, and you will always be my little girl."
I don't know why these thoughts came to mind that night. I hadn't been doing any journaling or soul searching. Things had been really stressful at work, dealing with a bully.
But my inner spirit kept telling me there was something else going on. I had begun to turn to God for guidance and trying to trust there even was a "God" who cared about people, about me, personally. But haven't been able to wrap my head around the whole virgin birth, resurrection stuff. So I had decided to throw all that out and just go back to the beginning. The beginning when I didn't know about all these rules you had to obey in order to spend eternity with God and avoid hell. I don't care about that right now. The only thing I have been desiring of late is a personal relationship with God, whoever, whatever God is. I am trusting God to tell me what he wants me to know about him. And this means I have to be open to all avenues he may use to speak to me. And my life experience has been that God speaks through people, thoughts, feelings and many other avenues. We just have to be open to it. We have to be honest with ourselves and accept the fact that sometimes we just don't know. That is where I had finally gotten. I had surrendered trying so hard to know everything. Studying so hard to learn everything. I just quit one day and said, "Its all up to you God." And I stopped going to church and bible studies and back to the basics. Either God is or He isn't. I choose He is. And that is good enough for today. Ok, back to the story at hand. This is what I believe was happening.
God gave me those words that night because he wanted me to see Him as my father. He wanted me to face the hurt and pain of what I didn't have so I would realize there is a father who does care, who does cherish me. There is a father who wants to keep me safe, to protect me from the dangers of this horrible world. But like an earthly father, that isn't always possible. Sometimes a dad has to allow his daughter to make her own mistakes, suffer her own pain and yes, sometimes a father cannot save his daughter from harm or death. But what a good father can do is love his child unconditionally and passionately as his cherished angel. Not all of us have been blessed with loving, protective dads, quite the opposite for a lot of us. But that doesn't mean we can't know a father's love. We just have to be willing to take that leap, very huge leap, of faith. And that means overcoming the fear of trusting and of having hope.
God is this father. He helped me to see that night that I was not alone. I was not having to fight this fight alone. All I had to do is be willing to take a leap of faith and trust that he is real and cares about what I am going through. That although I cannot always know for certain of his existence, I could still have hope. I just needed to take a risk and trust. For those of you who have painful pasts, you know the great difficulty this can be, how huge such a small word can be. However, as I look over my life, I see many situations where I should have been killed, yet here I sit typing and feeling sharing what I never thought I would ever share "out there".
I decided the next morning I would take an honest look backwards and see where God "may have been," and where I was. I was willing to be completely honest and just let me say, that was not easy. Nor is it easy to admit here that I had done some pretty awful things, and it was always when life did not go my way and I left God. Or something would happen that I didn't find fair, so like a little girl, I would throw a tantrum and pout. But the one thing I just recently learned was, no matter how much faith I thought I had in years past, I never had hope. And for me, if there isn't hope, there isn't faith. So that was where I had to start. I had to be willing to have just a little bit of hope and see what happened. And yes, I was scared out of my mind. Afraid nothing would happen. that again I would be disappointed when the "father didn't show up." But I didn't give up this time. And I believe that my perseverance and self honesty led me to that night this week where I could face the hurt little girl and let her go. Let her go and allow the big girl to develop a new relationship with a new father.
No longer leaning on others faith for strength, but on my own. No longer trying to "find the right god" so I could be "the good Christian.". No, God was showing me these things didn't matter right now. Right now all that mattered was I take that small leap of faith and trust in him.
So once again the big question began to haunt me. How could I trust a God loved me with all that had happened? How could I trust in a God's love with all the tragedies going on in the world? How could I believe in something that made absolutely no sense? But that inner voice was beginning to teach me new things. First of all, I didn't have to make sense of all these doubts right now. Secondly, I didn't have to concern myself with the worlds ugliness, that was God's business. Right now the only business of mine was to keep my eyes on him and what he was beginning to do within me.
Again those words came to mind, Hope and Trust. Was I really ready to Let Go and Let God as I have heard others say over the years but never really understood? So many "what ifs" come flooding in when I am close to taking that leap. And yet, that night I could hear God's quiet voice tell me, 'I can be that father you dreamed of, that father you always wanted, just take that leap into my protective arms, let me show you." And like the little girl who stood at the end of the diving board looking down at her daddy, trusting him yet still afraid, I took that jump, I leaped.
I don't know what the days ahead will reveal. I don't even know if I am closer to the truth or not. I only know that I have a serenity right now that I do not want to let go of. I do not have the energy any longer to keep fighting and questioning and searching. I am too old. I just want to accept what I have come to believe is a message from God and leave it at that. What or who does it hurt?
Does this mean I know who or what God is? No. Do I care? No. This is between me and God. And I have the trust today, that I will come to believe what God chooses me to believe about Him. (I use Him because it is easier that constantly having to say he/it).
It was a shock to learn I had never had hope in anything or anyone. But knowing that helped me to look at it and take a risk and hope. Hope for a personal relationship with God. Just God and me. Now it is late and God or no God, I still have to get my sleep.
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