A Search for the Truth

Being a believer of Christ since I was four years old, and having a personal relationship with Him every day since, does not seem to merit the title of this post. And yet... here it is.

Here I am.

It used to be as easy as knowing God, trusting God, fully believing in God... and that was that. And that is still how it is for most people I know.

Tim Keller  has said "Suffering awakens us out of our haunted sleep of spiritual sufficiency into a serious search for the divine."

When I read this quote a sense of relief calmed my anxious soul. It is ok to question. It is ok to search
for the truth. I still believed, and yet I wasn't 100% anymore. What did my relationship with God mean anymore? I had felt so abandoned by God in my darkest hours that I could no longer trust that He is who He says He is.

Message on a parking garage wall... I found it when I needed to

Lately... ok more like the past 10 months... I have been doing some major soul searching. My soul searching usually goes like this:

• Feel anger towards God about my depression and all associated with it
• Unable to speak to God
• Must force self to go to church, to talk about God, to make it like all was ok with Him
• God speaks through someone or something and it makes me think
• I talk it out to Dhrumil or anyone I feel will listen with an open mind
• I move a little closer back in the direction of Him
• I have a setback
• Feel anger towards God about my depression and all associated with it

You get the general idea...

Where I get confused about this soul searching journey is when I read over my posts early on in my diagnosis of PPD. They are full of suffering and yet they are also full of hope and trust in God. I was THANKFUL for my depression and I felt there was a REASON to it and I knew that God was with me. It wasn't until many months into it, when I started to mentally feel better, that the anger began.

Which brings me to last night, my incessant questioning and my latest challenge... what is the point to all of this suffering? Is it even worth living in such a horrible place? God what is the POINT to this life?

I saw the movie The Giver and it got me thinking... more like sat in the car after I saw it and stared into oblivion for good long while. And then I drove to the bookstore and sat in the bookstore and stared into oblivion for a good long while.

Do you see things in black and white? Wouldn't it be easier that way? No one would judge the color of one's skin. Life's rules would be understood. You do or you don't. Order would reign supreme.

What about the Bible? It could be interpreted in one way and one way only... every passage would be completely understood and every person would understand it in the way it was "supposed" to be understood. There would be no gray, no blurring, just clarity.

I will spare you the "book review" but the basic gist of the movie is that a community sees in black and white, they have been "spared" of all pain and suffering and they all go about their business in contentment and near perfection. The thing is that they have also been "spared" what love and true joy is.

I won't ruin the ending, but this was my takeaway:

With all of the crap in the world... the horrors... there is joy and love and so much to experience and through these experiences we still can see the true beauty of life. We were given choices, but there is also just life that doesn't come from choice, but just comes from living in a fallen world. But those moments of joy and love... those moments that give us glimpses of heaven and a tiny bit of what God's love is like... it makes it all worth it.

Black and white would not give you this. Clarity would not give you this. Like Mother Theresa said "I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust."

I have trust that this where I am supposed to be in my journey. Trust that hope can once more reign supreme. And trust that I will once again run into the arms of my Savior.