When I signed up for the whole “Christian thing”, I was told (or perhaps sold) that my life would be easier.
A broken heart, four suicides, and more dead friends than I have fingers and toes later, I wonder whose life they were talking about.
Growing up in the bible belt and graduating from bible college, I got immune to Christian one-liners. “God has a plan”, “Everything will work out in the end”, and “He is in control” not only are annoying, but seem to invalidate my feelings. The last thing I think the world needs is another smiley guy, telling you about the Jesus that can snap His fingers, say the magic words to make all your friends come back to life.
Saying that “accepting Jesus” will fix all your problems is a whole lot like saying “buying a treadmill will help you lose weight”.
All "accepting Jesus" has done for me is break my heart.
The deeper I follow Him, the more entangled I get with the poor and the forgotten, the more I see how screwed up I am and need Jesus to do something.
Yet, the more I process my life, the more I realize I was made for this.
I was made for girls telling me that they have abusive boyfriends.
My life was custom tailored to embrace weeping widows who don’t speak English.
Instead of running away, because I had people walk me through hard faith questions, I refuse to avoid hurting people who ask the same questions of God that I ask. (p.s. I still don't have the answers…)
Asking people to be honest about their faith has forced me to be honest with my own.
I understand some struggles of the poor, and because of Christ, I refuse to numb or dumb down the problem like I’ve done in the past.
Jesus is changing my life…
CRAP!
God help because I can’t heal the broken. I can’t even fix my own heart. I lose it more than an emo kid on emotional steroids. I’m not even close to “normal”.
I don’t know what to do other than just be your child and to wrestle with you about this.
And, by some miracle, maybe that’s enough.
