Honest

One of my favorite bloggers posted recently about the dangers of getting to "know" people through blogs. I've been doing mental gymnastics since I read her post to justify blogging ever since I read it. What if you don't have friends who want to hug you, who wear impeccable outfits, or who...? What if...?

Well, the what-ifs of my mental gymnastics don't really matter - What hit me this morning is that she is right. You can't fully know people merely through their blogs. Take my own blog, for instance. Sometimes, I write things that I think are true, only to find myself in a different place a few weeks or months later. I got a comment that reminded me of a post I wrote in November after Pete failed the Bar. It was a nice, conclusory, encouraging post. I got a few encouraged commenters. Good for me. *pats self on back*

But I only recorded so much.

Behind that encouraging, conclusory post was several months of postpartum depression, an extremely difficult move from a home I love to a six-month lease that really stretched our financial limits, a very demanding baby, loneliness, a fresh bout with Lyme disease, and a broken heart. But I couldn't admit any of that, because I wanted so badly to respond correctly to the situation. I didn't want to be human, to fall, to... admit that I felt God had betrayed me.

I wrote what I wanted to be true. I wrote what I wanted to think. Sometimes I write to define myself, so that I don't get away from me. But I don't really know myself, not the way God knows me, so there is always a variable. The variable in this instance offers a catalyst to the equation that is Kelly + God. (Weird, homeschooler using a math/science metaphor...)

The last month or so has been a month of searching. No, not searching, waiting.

I recently pulled out my old journals to see where I had walked with God and I found a disturbing cycle of "God, my life sucks, but it must be because I need to do better in my walk with You, so I'm going to do better now." Six months later, I was in the same spot again.

I can't live like this. I know the truth - God has given me a gift in the ability to sort through just about anything and see what is true and of Him and see what is not true. But knowing that something is true is not enough.

I'm an oldest child. This means that I do what is expected of me. I'm good at it, or at least, I used to be. It's how I gain approval. So I look at what I know is true, what I know God has said, and I do it. And I say it. And I despise myself, because in the core of my being, I am grasping at approval for myself. He is not really enough - I'm just saying it because it is what people want to hear from a good Christian girl like me. I accept suffering, because it is supposed to give me character. I don't say this and I do say that because...

Well, I don't know because. Not anymore.

Let me be honest.

I *hate* the fact that I have Lyme disease. I *hate* that I was up until nearly 1:00 a.m. with convulsions last night. I *hate* that I am walking through this murky cloud of depression that I can't reach past to talk to people coherently and interact to my own expectations. I *hate* that I get frustrated with my husband and with my daughter and with my sister - the people who love me most. I *hate* living in town, I *hate* power outages, and I *hate* looking like a frumpy housewife because I don't have time or money to do anything for myself beyond showering and throwing on whatever fits that I can nurse in.

I am angry. Angry with God for letting Pete fail the Bar the first time, angry with myself for being angry at Him. I'm angry with God for allowing my health to go crazy again - can't He see all that I need to do? I'm angry at my body, at the weather, at life in general. I can't sugar-coat it to myself anymore, couched in terms of "God knows" or "I'm okay."

I'm not dead. But I'm not okay. That is me being honest.

So I wait. I don't know if I'm waiting for lightning to strike or what.

A week and a half ago, I was the center of attention in a room of believers. I surprised the leader of the group when he asked me what I was afraid of.

"His kindness," I said. "His kindness terrifies me."

In my life, kindness always comes with a price. I respond properly, or it's gone, and man, am I in trouble. Only, what did I do? Or what didn't I do?

Right now, I know that I am desperate for Him. I can't go on without His help. But I haven't asked Him for it. I haven't asked Him to turn the power back on the last few times it's gone out. I haven't asked Him to give us a house in the country, or to give Pete a job or to let Pete pass the Bar. I don't ask Him to make Piper stop crying when I just can't take it anymore. I haven't asked Him to help me get better.

A pastor preached a sermon once that hit me really hard. He preached, "Sometimes things that just *have* to happen don't."

That's my life. To lay my desire out before Him to throw into the wind and let 'er rip feels stupid. I'm out of courage. I'm out of motivation.

Only I know this: I want Him. In the weirdest, craziest twist of all, all those things I won't ask Him for because I want them too much for Him to say no - they don't even really matter to me. I just want to know Him. I am sick of me. I am sick of my managing and manipulating my own life to try to understand why it happens this way. I am sick of saying all the same old spiritual-sounding things to bring myself to a comfortable conclusion. When I write, I want it to be real. When I sing, I want it to be real. When I encourage, I want it to be Him, not just me saying the right words. I am sick of *me.*

I know the truth of Him for the whole world. But not for me.

This time, I need to know Him for me.

I had a conversation with my mom the other day that made me think. I stepped outside of our words for a moment and tried to listen as an outside observer. To him, we would just be two venting females that he wanted to avoid. But we both knew what the other was saying and where it was coming from in our hearts. We knew our histories and our wounds and how they played into the frustrations we were expressing.

It struck me that words are so finite. As much as I love them, as much as I write and speak and sing them, they may always be misunderstood by someone who does not know me.

Interesting, then, that God's Word was a Person.

Knowing Him is the only way I'll ever reconcile the truth that I know with the circumstances and struggles in my life. I won't ever come to a place where I can accept myself, my desires, and my frailty without knowing Him. All the self-justification and manipulation in the world can't make me what I am not or give me the ability to be who I want to be.

I have started five or six sentences apologizing for my honesty in this post, but I can't justify it. It's what I need to say. If He can't use me without my white-washing, then He's not a very big God, is He? I can't disclaim me anymore. I hope He can and does love me as me, and that He made me as me to reveal Himself.

How He'll do that, I have no idea.

For once.

I find strange comfort in that.