I watched a homecoming video for a family who adopted a newborn through domestic adoption. I didn't feel too much angst until the video showed them coming home. They were the shiny, happy people. And I felt so, so weird.
"Why can't I be normal?" I whined to God. "How come I didn't get a normal life?" (It's easier to complain about that than to process my grief at continuing infertile.)
This wishing-I-were-normal is a refrain I keep coming back to, time after time. For long periods of time I'm happy in and sometimes even proud of my singular personality.
Then my uniqueness seems just... weird, especially lately, in the way I relate to God. I wrote a blog post two days ago, but I had to delete it because I had a sudden panic attack about how weird it was. I thought, "I can't share this; it's too unusual."
We went to church on Sunday; it was a United Methodist church. Growing up, I'd the vague idea that United Methodist churches were so liberal you might as well consider them the spawn of satan... Ok, I exaggerate a tad, but you get the idea.
They are not, actually. They're pretty straight laced and... well, methodical. I had the weirdest idea that while in church we would talk about Jesus. I was kind of looking forward to it. I was hoping to be in a group of people who all knew Him and had a relationship with Him.
But we didn't really talk about Him much. He didn't really come up as a subject. Don't get me wrong, they were all very nice people. They exuded niceness. I liked being there. I liked singing about how we'll gather at the river. They gave us a mug and some of them stopped by the house and gave us a loaf of bread. They looked like a new set of grandparents.
However, I think that experience actually heightened my sense of isolation. I have friends and family that I can write or talk to about Him, but I guess I was hoping for a sense of joyful community, you know?
It's that time of the month too, and my emotions are all over the chart, as usual. I've been finding it really challenging to experience sorrow, frustration, impatience and anger while in the presence of Christ. It just instinctively feels as though this must be insulting to Him.
Yesterday morning, I was wrestling with my negative emotions and I felt Him saying to me, read the Psalms. So I did, and I couldn't help but notice that David's emotions were all over the chart as well, sometimes even in just one psalm.
I said, ok, I see what You are saying.
Then He said, come outside, come walk with Me.
So I went. And we were walking along and He started explaining to me about rhythms, how everything He made has one, the seasons and my life as well. He explained to me that it's alright to slow down; He build periods and cycles of rest into everything He created.
He explained that this period of time when I've been doing so much reading and studying and which as been so wonderful, is going to naturally and rightly merge into a new season of life, probably back into finishing my story. My story keeps coming back into my heart lately.
I told Him that I was nervous if I stopped doing all this studying and Bible reading that I wouldn't find Him so close and real like I have. (It's amazing how quickly and persistently I want to put the living God into a nice, neat little box.)
He assured me that He would be guiding our relationship right along; it would continue to deepen and expand all through my life through every season and change. In everything and every place my life took me, He would teach me how to find Him present and available.
As we walked, I kept thinking of this phrase: practising the presence of God. I knew that phrase, or something like it, was the title of a book. When I got home, I googled it. It was a book written by a monk.
This monk also experienced the constant, loving and personal presence of God in much the same way I have. We related to Him in much the same way, only Brother Laurence had thirty years experience in walking that way and was therefore much, much better at it.
It relieved a lot of my sense of isolation and weirdness. Though, I guess relating to a seventeenth century monk is maybe not the most normal thing in the world... heh.
At a certain point, when I was getting all frustrated at myself that Brother Laurence's techniques weren't working for me, Christ gently reminded me that I'm not a monk... Good to remember.
It's getting a little easier just being in my negative emotion and in Christ at the same time. It feels a little like not fighting something any more... like, admitting to what it true and then resting in it.
He really and truly empathizes with me- He actually carried all my sorrows- but I can't experience it unless I admit to feeling the emotion myself, and then connect to Him in that place of emotional authenticity. If that makes any sense. Anyway, that's what I've been learning lately.
