First note: I’m on a lot of medicine, mostly sleep medicine. I’ll call you in three days when I wake up.
Second: In my delusion of body and clarity of mind, I’ve been having a lot of thoughts. I realized some things… For most of my life, I’ve acted and thought with a religious mindset. Religious meaning to look good because I’m supposed to look good, not because I am passionate about something religious.
This religiosity kept me a shiny, goody-two-shoes throughout middle school and most of high school. But religion is appearance, not heart, and I became an angry-inside, depressed-outside, but still go to church and be on a giddy high for 24 hours teenager. (Church is awesome, but not a substitute for a personal relationship with the God worshipped in service.)
Religion has worn me down, but now I know and recognize it. And I refuse it, but I am left with nothing. I feel like I am starting new, I’m a baby. Not that I am a new Christian; I prayed the prayer a long time ago…. And have been a shiny Christian on the outside since. However, I am now struggling with the inside. I am not a green, living branch, vitally connected, as I should be. I am a massacred limb, hanging by a thread, even as my insides dry out. I am threatened with being cut off, my mediocre color and my lukewarm life are dancing dangerously close to a cliff whose gulley I don’t want to see.
I question purpose, yet do not wait to hear an answer. I wail for direction in daylight and analyze till I sleep in darkness.
I am in conflict. I am in trouble. I have knowledge, and no revelation. I have religion and no relationship. I am what I have always judged and thought myself above.
I wrote in my journal, “I have fallen from the cliffs of morality. My standards are at sea level.”
And I cannot feign ignorance. I must act.
But I hesitate that my actions be motivated by appearance. I want relationship. I want direction. I am drying up without living water, yet I wait so that I do not drink to please people.
I want to want to please God.
Which starts with knowing what He desires. In a heart to heart way. In an “I live and act a certain way in order to please my Father” way.
This is my desire. This is my confession. I have been false. I am being made new. Starting from the inside out.
Dear Lord….
