Back in action

I am not sure what came over me tonight, but I needed to write something. Or, maybe not so much write something as just express a mess of emotions and hopefully see if anyone else has experienced similar things. I guess that's a naive thing to say - I think a lot of others have experienced similar emotions. I am just not always very good at expressing faults that I see no way of easily fixing... but here goes.

I'm posting on another blog right now, but it's about running and Kenya, and seeing as my thoughts tonight have nothing to do with either, I thought I should write something here.

Tonight I sat down to read my bible - which certainly doesn't happen every night. I found myself unsure of what to read or what to think or what kind of state to try to get myself into. No matter how much I've grown and matured spiritually in my life, I've continued to have this same struggle since I was in high school, probably. Fantastic! I've heard of people - who are probably much stronger spiritually than I am, or just more trusting - say things like, "Today I just asked God to lead my bible-reading time, and I flipped open to _______ and it was exactly what I needed to read." So, when I'm feeling distant from God and lazy (which is more often than I'd like to admit), I sometimes think, ok I'll just open my bible and read a passage and see what it says to me. And then I read like, one of the lineages in the Old Testament, and I'm like, crap I didn't get anything out of that. Should've tried harder to "randomly flip" to Romans. I don't always treat my bible reading like roullette, obviously, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that I often don't even know how to approach my bible reading time with God. I just feel like I spend so much of my time wrapped up in my own thoughts, goals, ideas, etc... that when I'm forced to be silent in front of God, I just don't know what to say or do or think. And I always think to myself - well, someday, I'll be spending hours a day studying the word and being in prayer, and this will all come easily to me. I won't feel like an imposter. Maybe that's too strong of a word for this scenario, but it's late and I can't think of a less-strong word that sort of means the same thing. But, how do I expect that to happen? And, is it even a matter of spending a lot of time and energy? Or does my heart just need to change? I cannot change myself - that is one thing I've learned for sure in the past year or so. But, God can change my heart, and I feel like I am not open to it, so often. So consequently, I do not change, which is so frustrating.

So, tonight, I read for a bit (mmmmmm 30 seconds) and then got annoyed that I wasn't doing anything useful or feeling anything, so I stopped. And I just felt God say to me, just calm down! I think I shove things off - my emotions, my struggles - because it seems to hard to deal with everything. I have a picture of myself as I'd like to be - healthy, joyful, committed, vulnerable, accessible - and then I have the reality of who I am now, and it's hard to figure out how I get from the reality to the hope on my own. Because I think I should be able to do it on my own. I think I try to focus on how I think my life should be, and how I want it to be, but then I get so overwhelmed because some things that I want aren't my present reality. And I don't see how or when they might be my reality. Mixed in with that is comparison to other people, as well as comparing my present state with how I wish things would be. I've always been a believer that this sort of self-reflection can be a good thing, because it can force you to see, "ok if I'm not satisfied, WHY am I not satisfied? Can I change it?" But, I don't know - I guess it can be good, but it can also be paralyzing. I feel like God is saying to me, just focus on ME. Look straight at me - not at my friends who I compare myself to, not to other people who have the jobs/lifestyles I wish I had, not to my vision of who I wish I could be - just focus on me. That is so hard to do. Is it just me? I know we all have spiritual struggles, but I don't know if this is something that is just insanely hard for everyone. So, I will try. I don't really even know what trying looks like. Maybe it's a discipline thing. How do you keep from focusing on your own plans and ambitions, and your friends and other people who have what you think you want? This may all be very basic, but it's what is stifling me, spiritually, right now.

Anyway, that's all I have for now. Kudos to you if you read through all that. I won't even try to wrap this up nicely because I feel unsettled, so if this post sounds unsettling, I guess that's fine.