Disappointment with or without God.

I've been sitting on this one for a few days. Ever since I read Philip Yancey's Disappointment with God. 

You know. The vulnerability thing. Do I really want to put it out there that I have been disappointed with God?

Like, what will people think? Will I get kicked out of choir?  Or will I get Those Stares. Where people with unblinking gazes bore laser beam holes of judgement into my soul?

This morning I read a blog post by an Anglican rector from British Columbia that took a LOT of guts. He has more at stake than I do. I am still the unknown nobody. He is a published author and pastor! At the beginning of his post he shares how he struggled with publishing his conclusions on some extensive research on yoga.

So. I have no excuse.

From the title and my admission of recent reading you can guess where I've been for the past... oh let's just say looooong time.

Life today is radically different than I imagined it would be when I grabbed that diploma holding tube from the president of Houghton College back in 1994. During those short four years, I had the biggest dream of my life crash and burn by sophomore year. Then there was plan B!

I wrapped my arms around that new dream and with the support of my new department full of amazing profs, I worked my butt off to complete a whole new degree and minor in two years! I zoomed from the bottom of the GPA food chain to the very top! Ah! Success! Goals! Dreams! Hope!

All to crash in a burning heap a few weeks before graduation.

I left Houghton disillusioned. Confused. Angry. I thought God shut one door to open another? How else could I explain that kind of miraculous success? The profs had never seen such a case like me... from flailing failing to soaring and scoring.

Plan C...D...E...F...G... when you run out of the 26 letters there is AA... BB... and so on.

God was coming off more and more like an enemy rather than the Good God of the Bible.

For years I felt betrayed by Him. Heck, I prayed that I would only go down paths paved by His Will. I assumed His Will = Darcie's Amazing Stories of Success.

Thanks to Yancey's book and my first ever episode of Dr. Who, I have a new perspective.

Being human, I wanted... no... demanded an explanation for the mess called my life.

 From God Himself.

I wanted Him to answer to me so I could accept the way things turned out and get on with it.

Or be over it.

Like Job.

Yancey highlights The Wager between God and Satan at the beginning of the book of Job. How Satan bet God that Job's faith would crack under adversity. Satan believed God bribed Job into faith. God and Satan shook hands and the bet was on. We all know how it turns out. Read Job if you are not familiar with it. It is so honest and real.

Anyway, Yancey's point is that we get so focused on our reality. The reality of planet Earth, that we fail to remember there is another reality. The spiritual realm. There's a whole bunch of stuff going on that we can't see. Understand. Or know. But both dimensions are interconnected.

Like in Dr. Who.

Okay, so I put off watching it for fear I would get hooked. Sunday night it was on. And yeah, I was hooked. Aside from the clever writing and fun plot I was struck by the parallel between what I saw on the screen and Job. Job's faith put Satan in his place. Was a nail in his eternal coffin.

In Dr. Who, there was this entity, the Witch of the Well, who had been seen for centuries in the same spot. A ghost hunter and his companion assumed she was murdered there long, long ago and sought to rest in peace.

The Doctor, however, had a totally different theory. He discovered she was in a pocket dimension and was actually a time traveler from the future. but her circumstances affected the dimension of the present and the present affected her predicament as well. Although unseen to most, the dimensions were interconnected. Who had to travel to the pocket dimension to understand the plight, then rescue the young woman.

Our lives here affect the spiritual. The spiritual realm affects our reality - check out Daniel who's prayer went unanswered b/c a battle broke out preventing the answer to come in a timely manner. (I think it's chapter 9 if you wanna check it out).

Yancey concludes that there are no concrete answers to  feeling disappointed with God. We suffer and suffer and may never know why this side of Heaven. In fact, our situations may not get better this side of Heaven.

Heaven.

That's what it's all about. Our time here is short relative to eternity.

Earth is not our home. Disappointments and hurts make us long for our true place.

So what did I learn?

I can be all mad and miffed at life with God or without God. Whether I choose to turn on my heels and stomp away from Him or press into him I will suffer. Life sucks. The bombings in Boston by Islamic terrorists? The explosion in Texas? The economy? Our political climate? North Korea? Iran?

And you know what?

It's not gonna get any better.

I'm gonna face all the disappointment in life WITH God.

You?

The "V" word that makes me squeamish

Okay, okay, it's not what you think.

And I wonder if it has the same effect on anyone else... or am I alone?

The "V" word that makes me tremble and choke down this morning's eggs and spinach is vulnerability.

Free Dictionary defines it as being susceptible to physical or emotional injury. Susceptible to attack. Open to Censure or criticism; assailable.

I was vulnerable once. Until all of the above happened. And for the most part that is why I stopped blogging for three years. The pain from the emotional injury was way worse than any physical pain I ever felt. Here's some perspective - I had knee surgery two years ago where they had to saw my femur in half, crank it open, then screw and plate it back together.

Emotional pain is worse than physical.

For three years I've been piecing my life back together. Keeping to myself. Trusting fewer people than I have fingers. Not writing anything that could be used against me. Struggling to find my purpose and place. Feeling quite alone.


Last time I blogged I got myself into a whole heap of trouble. In fact, some people thought me and my ideas were a little too unsafe for the general churchy populace.

No.

Not doing it.

Blogging for reals requires vulnerability.

I can write silly posts and tell funny stories all day long. Even post the cutest cat pictures you've ever seen. But for what? Who would bother with this blog? How could that build relationships with potential readers?

It wouldn't.

So.

The only option left is to face the "V" Monster head on.

And blog.

So please, if anyone at all is even reading JITLB anymore, be patient as I poke my head out from underneath my rock. And indulge in cute cat pictures once in a while.

Will this beet the end of me?

Part of my three year absence was due to a complex array of health related issues including the creation of Frankenknee. But I won't bore you with details.

When life is unkind, being healthy is critical for dealing with the stressors that lurk behind every bush, hide under every rock and assault you each time you answer the phone or open an email. How can you fight off the boogeyman if you are curled up under a blanket in bed?

A few days ago I had a biomerdian test done to see where I'm at in the battle against Yeast Overgrowth Syndrome. My chiropractor noticed sluggishness in both my liver and gall bladder. The last thing I need is another surgery.

After Frankenknee and the nightmare with my mom last year, I don't ever want to see the inside of a hospital again.

Dr. Kristen prescribed me some "medicine". Food medicine. She told me Hippocrates himself said to use food as medicine.

After two days of taking said prescriptions, I am not sure how either of the following qualify as food.

Let's start with apple cider vinegar. I am taking that to detox my liver. I also get to wash it down with the juice of a whole lemon with a dash of cayenne pepper!

Have you ever tried to drink straight apple cider vinegar?

It is one of the most vile substances on the planet. I rank it with poop and vomit. At least I don't have to drink those.

Then there are the beets (for gall bladder). No, I do NOT get to cook my beet. I must put it in my Vitamix and drink the pretty purple liquid from a RAW beet. Tastes like dirt. Makes me relate well iwth earthworms.

But I tell ya, beets should come with a warning label!

Fortunately I was able to make 1+1 = 2 and knew I was not dying. But a person not in the know might die of a myocardial infarction in the bathroom. Pink and purple are not natural colors to be seen. Let's leave it at that.

I called the chiro's office this morning to ask if taking my "medicine" ever gets any easier. The response was, "Honestly... no. It's a matter of pure discipline."

Well then.

I must admit I slept all the way through the night last night for the first time in many months. Thanks to the nasty tasting concoction Dr. Kristen prescribed.

And after all, isn't medicine supposed to taste awful?

Gettin' my blog back on

I took a three year break.

Been through a lot of stuff.

Still going through even more stuff.

But...

There really is no such thing as perfect timing when all the planets, planes and pine cones all line up perfectly indicating it's now time to move forward again with the writing thing.

Oh, I haven't stopped writing. I've been working on my novel. I just felt the need to withdraw from any kind of notice.

Spotlight.

Judgement.

After sending out a proposal for my fiction, I was advised to focus on building a platform. My how things have changed in the past three years!

To blog or not to blog? What formats? Audience? Start a new one? Revive the old one? Do it all in thirty minutes hoping to attract ten thousand followers?

Yikes.

I've been exploring the world of Tumblr. Created a blog Silk Wood and Steel. It's a blog for color guard fans. I'm still trying to figure it all out. But it seems to be the place where guard lovers hang out and interact more so than Facebook.

My Twitter account is still around. You can follow me @DarcieJoy. Posts are more or less random as I figure out how to hone my content.

And after lots of brain torturing thinking, I decided to go ahead and bring Litterbox back to life as my personal blog.

About life. Writing. Parenting. Guard. Stuff.

So. Here I am.

Again.

:)