conflict

if you were to talk to me right now i would tell you things were good. and they are. i don’t know if it is the fact we’ve lived in the quay now for ten years (the only other place i’ve lived for ten years is indiana) or the past year of experiences of feeling like a dream might be ending. then this unknownlingly rally to survive and create again (i think a little bit of it all). that i’m just trying to sort all of it out. and it has made me feel stuck in my own story.

i picked up this book tonight by donald miller, a million miles in a thousand years. it was recommended to me by a friend who i find amazingly more wiser and uncanny ability to just listen to you whine about your problems. every time i meet up with him i walk away feeling bad because i just rambled about myself and i vow to be a better listener next time. but he recommended this book and i didn’t read it then and probably should have but i’m a bad listener remember. now i’m reading it and i find myself tearing up as if i’m about to uncover the real me.

i won’t tell you about the book, you should read it yourself, but part one ends with this line, ‘she knows who she is. she just forgot for a little while.’ and i stare at the statement like i’m staring in a mirror. 

i don’t know if you have ever stared in the mirror at yourself for a long time. i mean really stared at yourself, looking yourself in the eyes. the whole experience is kind of creepy. i feel like someone is going to jump out a me and eat me. like i’m going to jump out and eat myself. but i did that the other morning and i just looked at myself. it really wasn’t that pretty of a sight. i’m fatter, look tired, and older too. and i just stared into my eyes hoping to see the real me. the me i want to be. the me God made me to be.

but i have these thoughts right now. sometimes dreams. people who have said hurtful things. really quite stupid things that aren’t even truth but other people believed. and it makes me angry. they just left like a tornado does. they didn’t stay to pick up the pieces. they didn’t care about the damage they left behind or to see or hear the truth. and they didn’t care what lost souls stayed lost. it makes me want to go buy a carton of eggs and go egg a house. i never done that. i’d feel bad after i did it and start cleaning it up. but i don’t feel very forgiving right now. i don’t feel very tolerant right now. i’m not sure how to get rid of the thoughts. and then i think worst things like no one likes me and i don’t really have any friends. which is not true. and i know it’s not true but these thoughts run through my head. and i start to think that everything i’m doing has no purpose and i’m just wasting time and eveyone else’s. and i’m a pastor. and pastor’s aren’t suppose to think such thoughts. my god, i had a friend visit our church recently and she ask christie what she should call me at church. call me a fool. call me selfish, unforgiving and a sinner. call me weak. call me insecure. she told her to call me j-bear.

and i’m over critical of my self right now. i think my sermons suck. at least last weeks and possibly this weeks coming up. but i don’t have time for everything and i feel bad about that too. and then i start to think what should i really be doing and where should i really be spending my time. and then the whole creative process starts monday morning ticking down to the next sunday. nothing like knowing that one day out of the week you get to stand before people and sound like crap. like i’m an artist who’s come with an empty canvas with nothing to show. i asked my sister-in-law if my message was bad on sunday. she said, ‘did you say what God wanted you to say?’ and maybe that’s my problem. i don’t know what to say. say about my story that God is writing.

another quote from the book, ‘sometimes we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in. we think God is unjust, rather than a master storyteller.’

so really i’m just feeling sorry for myself. there are people who have it far worse and harder than i do. i’m just feeling stuck in the story. trying to put all the pieces of working bivocationally again, creating a community that will be life-giving, and what that really even means for me.

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