Crisis of Faith

It's amazing to me what I've decided should be my first post after not blogging for over 2 months. Truly there have been many things on my mind, many topics I felt stirred to write about. Either procrastination won out in preventing me to write until now or God was just waiting for the heart of all these other topics to come to the surface so I could just get to the point. It's a little irritating really. All these other topics made me feel more spiritual. This entry, on the other hand, is far more telling of my humanity which I most times disdain. Alas and alack, I'm committed to living up to the name of my blog. So here goes nothing.

The past few months of being in counseling has been in a word wretched. Slowly but surely God has been wrestling little bits of control from my hands; control that I had mistakenly thought I had given up long ago. But those control wars were really only the tip of the iceberg of the really big battle. "Do you think you do this in your relationship with God?", my counselor gently asked last week. We had been talking about struggles I have in trusting people and how it causes me to let them come only so far with me before I put up the big red stop sign with flashing lights. I foolishly(?) thought that only my human relationships fell victim to this particular road sign. Until my counselor asked this question that is. My first reaction was "No, of course I don't do this with God". That reaction lasted as long as it took to think the thought. Then I thought, "Well, it's possible I do this", followed immediately by, "Oh yeah. I do this". A sinking feeling in my stomach...I don't trust God. As if that sickening moment of realization wasn't enough the message was reinforced a couple times as the week went on. One such reinforcement came in my study of Psalm with a friend. The chapter for the week was 9 and as I read over it I came across a verse I underlined a few years ago in a time of depression: "Those who know your name trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you" (v.10). Reality check: I don't believe the Lord doesn't forsake us sometimes, I don't trust Him right now, I don't know Him as well as I thought I did.

Trust me when I say this is one of the scariest moments in my relationship with God that I've ever had. I've tried to recover my own faith, remind myself of all the things I've learned about God in the past in times of struggle, tried to push myself back into a place of trust but I just can't. I know my attempts at this are only a tactic to make myself feel better and get out of the discomfort; attempts to feel in control of my own faith again. However, I've clearly come to a point where there is no turning back, no deceiving myself about there being something amiss in my relationship with God. The only choice I have is to continue forward into the crisis no matter how scary or out of control it may feel. As if these realizations weren't enough, some beautiful sisters in Christ have had the gall to give me permission to wrestle with God and rage on (oh yes, there has been rage this week) while they had faith for me, on my behalf, that God would bring me through. Again, this feels so wrong (because that leaves things in the control of others yet again) and yet I know I have no choice.

The formal definition of crisis is "a stage in a sequence of events at which the trend of all future events, especially for better or for worse, is determined; turning point." I think this pretty much summarizes the current stage my faith is in. Here's depending on the faith of my sisters in Christ that the future trend is for better.