Don't Worry I Still Love Jesus

You never know what a "gut level" honest post will do to people's minds. Yesterday, I just threw out there that I am struggling, REALLY STRUGGLING with my prayer life. I got some emails from people that were very meaningful responses to my post. Rich salve I believe I said to one of them. I got some that were sweet, but not particularly helpful. And I got some from people I freaked out who wanted to know if I still believed in God. LOL! (It really did make me laugh out loud.)

I'd like to start with a "for the record" statement. Don't worry, I still love Jesus and I still believe in God. I told the girls at my girl's group the other night that when I have grieved all I know to grieve and mourned all I know to mourn; when I find myself at the very bottom of all I can handle, the one thing I can count on is finding my faith intact. The one thing I can count on is that God isn't going to have changed at all. My perspective of God might have changed. My understanding of who God is might have changed. But PRAISE GOD, HE hasn't changed at all.

I think I am better for the struggling, if that makes sense.

I'm going to work on not offending anyone here in the next few sentences . . .

I have a picture in my mind of this woman who gets up early every day, reads her Bible, maybe writes in a journal, smiles and neatly tucks the Bible and journal into their place in her nightstand and starts her day. She leads her life spoonfeeding Jesus platitudes to the masses, and remembers to take a healthy dose each day for herself. On the weekends, she puts on her best Sunday-go-to-meeting outfit, spit polishes her son's wayward hair, irons the wrinkles out of her daughter's dress, dutifully plants a kiss on her husband's cheek and then they all walk into church together, one big happy family. Life there in the Jesus Bubble is good and safe and perfect.

But I don't want to live in the Bubble. I lived in the Bubble. It's not real. Jesus did not have a safe and easy life. And He clearly told us our life wasn't going to be safe and easy either. But whenever I find myself in the "this freaking life is not easy" place, I wrestle with God. And I know that even though I am limping, I will get up and walk. And the place where I struggled, I will remember. Not because I left an altar of rocks there (it's in the Bible), but because that hard place where I struggled will be a memory that showed me something else about God that I didn't understand when I was in the bubble.

All that to say, the struggle is hard, but I choose the struggle over the bubble. At least for right now. Who knows? I might go screaming back to the bubble, demanding to be let back in to bubbleville. Oh, and don't worry, I still love Jesus.