It's Not My Fault

I'm indoors again today, enjoying the color changing tips of the big pine, and the red trees in the lower left of my view.  It's sunny and clear, but only 51 degrees.

It's curious, as we're supposed to have rain later, to have such clarity now.  Though, just now, I'm watching a huge cloud quickly float its way in from the lower right.  

And I'm struggling today with clouded thoughts.  Yesterday was another failed attempt at making anything worthwhile of my tiny business.  It felt like another slammed door and I'm thinking about how slammed doors would be decent guides if I wasn't just left in the hallway scratching my head.  If there was some guidance in another direction.

It's not small thing to confront the reality of your transactional relationship with God.  However, I want to be so bold as to point out that we may come by it honestly.  That is, we do read plenty of passages in the Bible where we might derive such a position from.  Today, in Jeremiah 22, the Lord himself says, in verse 2, to do what is right and just, and then in verse 4, tells what the reward is for that.  Then in verses 15-16, the Lord actually says this is what is means to know him...to do right and have it go well for you: "'He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?' declares the Lord."

Those are his words, not mine.  So am I really all to blame if I expected to have things go well when I set about to do right and just?  I submit that I am not.

So I'm not willing to just lay down here and call this all my fault. My sense that things will go well if I do right and that I will be rescued in distress both come from Scripture, not just from my sinfulness.

Sandra tells me this dark night journey is leading me on a path to know God better and love better.  I feel completely devoid of any sense of God and I feel completely devoid of love.  But just when I am again tempted to throw the book across the room, she says that there are difficulties we may face and one of them is anger.

So now I feel like maybe it's worth continuing the reading, since anger is like my blood these days.

We are being stripped, she says, and that loss of control is so unsettling that our helplessness manifests in anger.  Indeed.  

But she points out that we have a choice to let our anger drive us into bitterness and despair (check and check) or we can choose to accept God's love in the midst of the pain and brokenness, and experience resurrection.  

Then I have a lot of work to do, because I am nowhere near the latter, and entirely in the former as of now.

But, like so many others around me, Sandra then goes into saying how accepting God's love in the midst of all this means that we can help and serve others with it, and I am back to wanting to throw the book across the room.

Is this all we got, people?  This is what everyone keeps telling me.  Because you're going through this, you can help other people.  My less-than-helpful last counselor told me this, that I get to be a blessing to others through what I'm going through.  Oh boy! I get to be subjected to all kinds of suffering and stripping so that others don't have it as hard as I do!  Um, forgive me if I don't get excited.  Even Jesus prayed for the cup to be taken from him if there was any other way.

This is the last thing I need to hear, as a recovering codependent.  What I need to hear is how to restore a sense that God cares about me and loves me completely apart from any service that I render to others.  My entire life and my entire sense of God finding any value in me has been directly tied to how much of myself I have given up, how many of my own needs I have sacrificed, how many notches in my belt I have earned by giving to and giving up for others.

When do I get to have inherent value?  When do I get to stop being measured by what I produce and what I sacrifice and what I contribute that is of benefit to someone else?  What am I missing here?  Because it's a lot of mixed messages.  That God loves you just as you are, but also it's only if you're doing everything right and you're useful to others.

It's just always like "Take a moment and just experience God's love for you.  But not too long of a moment, now get off your butt and do something for someone else."

Because no one really knows or understands what he expects of us. But rather than get honest about what we don't know, we'd rather just try and look busy should he be watching.

I don't want to pretend.  I don't want to look busy.  I want to get honest and ask honest questions, no matter how many church ladies gasp.