Good Question

Someone asked me a good question yesterday, so here it is with my answer:

What does it mean that "You don't like the lack of order in your soul?"
It feels unorganized, messy, and even a little foggy. I've lived this fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants spirituality....taking in what everyone else tells me and running with it. I want to be my own person and think my own thoughts and feel my own way of feeling, so I'm diving into some murky water and not so sure what I'll see when the dust settles. Does that make sense? I'm asking God to clear the way and make Himself known to me the way He really is and not through the lens of everything I've read and learned and been told. That's where I"m at today. Good question....

Introduction

This started out as a private blog between friends, but after writing for several years, I'm in a different place and have a desire to share more words with more people. Some of the more personal stuff has been edited out, but openness and vulnerability is still at the heart of my writing. I welcome your comments and hope some of what I share touches a part of your heart and journey you may not be aware of.

Here's my journal entry for today:

Lord, the conversation w/ Margaret today leaves me stirred up -she said at the end of the conversation that I was hard to read -that it seemed like some internal struggle was going on that I'm unaware of and couldn't express. So here's a stab at attempting to express it....

I feel it stirring, but am not sure how to put it to words yet. Getting beyond the usual struggles of the first part of my adult life leaves me to walk around in a whole new realm - with the opportunity to go deeper into myself and be brave enough to see what's there. What I see inside me is smelly and dirty and unkempt. I don't like the lack of order in my soul.

It feels as though I'm entering what may be a scary season of questioning - scary because what if the answers or conclusions I come to turn my world upside down? What if the darkness of my soul is too much to bear? What if I've been living a lie in my faith? What if I can't go on living life as I know it?

How do I even wrap my head around God as a Being who is both male and female or neither one? So many questions...why are men the head of the family as Christ was the head of the church? How much of the Bible is slanted towards men by its writers? Some of these questions are being stirred up by reading Sue Monk Kidd's writing about her own journey. I'm being challenged in many ways as I take in her story. She has some great early writings about her walk with God and connecting with Him (First Light, When the Heart Waits). Lately, I've been reading "The Dance of the Dissident Daughter", which describes her journey out of Christianity and into Feminist Theology/Spirituality. Margaret encouraged me w/ the thought "once you've tasted His grace, you don't bag your faith", so I press on, fascinated w/ her story and wanting to understand where she was coming from and also wanting to understand how what she went through impacts me.

Help me to be open, Lord, to Your truth. Its all I want - I want to be true to myself - true to you - and true to those I'm entrusted with.