wiser for words.

I've been feeling alone in the church recently. It's an illusion, I know. But all the same, I feel it. This gnawing sense that there's so much going on that no one understands. In truth, a lot of them don't. More do than I probably credit as such.

I've stopped writing and talking about a lot of it because I get frustrated with my inability to talk openly about some issues, and because it's hard to be honest inside the church. There's a certain pressure to appear to have it all together. I fear that whatever I write might be misconstrued. And that in that confusion, my sense of being alone will be all the sharper.

But... I've dropped the F-bomb in this blog. More than once. I've suggested that the pastor doesn't mean what he's saying. I called a holiday service an abomination, and I completely insulted some members of another church. I've admitted to drugs and sex. I openly challenged God to come and get me, after suggesting that the non-denominationals are like the methadone of the church world. I quoted a pastor's wife in an unflattering light. The list goes on.

What's a little more honesty? You already know who I am. What I am. You know that I have a knack for getting it wrong, for arrogance, and error. In fact, the great strength of this blog for me has been as a medium for the honest working-through of my faith. I think that for the few who read it, that honesty is what compels.

The truth is--I have a choice to make now. I can either keep walking in, and face the stuff that I'm finding hard. Or I can decide I was wrong, and turn around. And that choice will make all the difference. I don't mean to be dramatic, it just will.

It used to be that every other week I was ready to leave the church, because I hadn't yet differentiated my affection for the church with my love for God. As my love for God grew in, I became more accepting of His Church. I began to recognize that whatever I don't agree with, I was learning about Him in the church, and that was (is) a necessary process.

This juncture is a little bit different. I now know more of the choice that we all make. I'm smart enough to know that most of our choices aren't based on fact, but emotion, but that the kind of wisdom that I'm seeing in the people I most admire comes from their learned ability to push past emotion, staying true not necessarily to "fact" as we moderns envision it, but to God's fact, as felt through His Spirit and seen in His Word. Their faith seems unwavering not because the experience of their faith remains still, but because they choose to act on the truth of promises, not the felt experience of them.

So, I feel myself at an interesting crossroad. I can choose to decide it's too hard. The wisdom I'm seeing--it's impossible. God can't work that in me. I'm not that kind of faithful. Or. I can choose to ignore all of the backtalk, and just do it. Live the faith I feel I'm not capable of. Wisdom, I'm finding, is made of so many seemingly tiny decisions throughout the course of a day that together, strengthen the whole. But those decisions have to be made.

In the interest of honesty, I've been struggling with very specific issues lately. Seminary? That's completely impractical. But the other possibilities are entirely joyless to me. What to do? Giving. I enjoy giving to my pet things, and at this point in my life, I have a financial choice to make--I can either give to the church, or to those projects (things that have been important to me for some time). There's really not the possibility of both right now, though I would imagine that won't always be the case. Character. There's poisonous irritability and discontent in my heart recently. I'm not living as the person of character I'd like to be.

I've sat down to write about any of these, and felt frustrated. How do I talk about them? What do I say? What will people think? The more I stare at a blank screen, the more anxious I get, and eventually, I run from the process entirely. Because I know the choice is there. Because I'm scared?