Lessons from Diana's God

When I began to try to speak to God again, Diana offered her God. That seemed a little odd, and, well, I was a little nervous about it. Would God be offended? What if I was dialing up the wrong one? What if there was no one listening, and I was just talking to myself anyway?

Still, one has to begin somewhere, so I did.

"Um, Diana's God, if you are listening, maybe we could talk? I don't really know who you are and the god I thought I knew wasn't working. I mean, we hadn't talked in a while and, well, I was hoping since you like Diana and she is a woman of faith who trusts you and who I trust, that you might not mind if I tagged along."

And that is how God and I were introduced, not by my faith in a God greater than myself, but my faith in a woman who had a God she claimed was loving and caring, even more than she was to me.

My life has been flipped around a bit in the last week. Ok, more like a major overhaul. My calendar is filled with useless schedule notations that I haven't had the courage to erase. My laundry hangs waiting to be worn, but I have nowhere to go. My sense of who I am has been overwhelmed with one piece of paper, that is actually part truth and part embellishments, but held my fate anyway.

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I have begun to smoke sometimes, when the anxiety hits my chest and I cannot breath, I suck in the menthol smoke and exhale them both away. Prayer is nominal and consists of mostly, are you still there, followed by, I know but it feels bad. Sleep eludes me until exhaustion hits at 2am. I get to my appoinments without enthusiasm but proud for showing up nonetheless.

I cannot trust what I know. Even as I began to understand with Diana's guidance, what I thought I knew about God was bad information, twisted by self loathing and a fallen world. What I think I know about myself, who I am, is twisted by pain and loss. Altho grateful for the many women God has allowed me to guide over these years, and for the men and women who I look as guides still, I can only sometimes listen to their thoughts of me as a strong, capable, creative, inspiring woman as if they were fairy tales about someone else. I do not recognize that woman as me today. Perhaps I will someday. Or perhaps their perceptions are tainted with love. That's ok, too. Maybe one day soon I will be able to accept it.

Acting as if is sometimes all we can do to get thru the day. And that is ok.

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Lately as I meditate, the Cross has come to my mind over and over and over but all I see is my guilt, my shame. I see Him pierced because of me, him beaten because of me. I have only begun to ponder the Cross as loving after some bit of music, or speaker, or, really I don't know where it came from and don't need to know, scolded me. That love is almost too much to bear in any given moment.

God's death wasn't about my evil, but about His love. I did not bloody and break his body. He did. He knew I was not going to measure up, so he loved me anyway. Just shatters my thoughts.

And then I think of the million ways I let him down. I am not good enough to be his daughter. I want the world to know what an amazing God he is, but all I can do is mumble. My words are inadequate, my actions clumsy, my temper uncontained, my heart splattered with sin. There is no where else for me tho as I hide in the shadows of him, trying to keep out of the way, unnoticed, but I feel guilty. So inadequate and broken a creature could not serve him. How prideful to think it possible!

If I could, I would do great things for this great God, this Father of mine. But all I can offer is this extravagant desire of a feeble soul.