The Day God Loved Me Again

For the past several months...or perhaps even longer than that...I have been feeling this strange disconnect from God, who I've always felt very bonded to and believed in with out any hesitation or doubt. It wasn't that this feeling made me question my beliefs or rethink my religion...it was simply that, somewhere, I had been lost. I had always felt like God was constantly right beside me, protecting me and aiding me even in my most miserable hours, cushioning the blows. Somewhere along the way, I lost that.

Maybe it was from the overwhelming compilation of my mistakes that had started to build up over the past two years. Maybe it was from lack of communication...the fact that I hadn't really prayed or even just talked with him colloquially in ages. Perhaps it was a culmination of all these things. It was a dreadful feeling...the sense that, even more than before, I was completely and utterly alone. And having lost the connection, I feared over my quality as a person and what fate would await me in the afterlife. I remembered hearing during some Bible class that if you committed enough sins, and they were horrible enough, your heart would be hardened from God.

I had never really understood exactly what that meant...but was that what had happened to me?

The past few months, since June really, have been unusually difficult for me. Financial, educational, work, health, and relationship problems began to stack up, one on top of the other, until it seemed like I was drowning in the weight of my responsibilities. I had never encountered so many difficulties all at once...it seemed like perhaps God had truly abandoned his post as protector, and let the negative forces of the world into my previously carefree life. For a while, I took it upon myself to blame my creator, to yell and chastise him for allowing these things to happen, to blaming him for all of the things I was too weak to blame on myself.

Then, perhaps somewhere, that yelling turned into begging. And that begging into pleading. The pleading into prayer.

And today, at a moment when I was feeling vulnerable and lost...truly alone and not knowing my way...wanting desperately to know some manner of hope...something happened.

I was driving in the car, on my way back home, listening to Matt Nathanson blare through the stereo. The song was "Car Crash", a wistful tune of promise. And a strong gust blew through the trees, sending a cascade of yellow, orange and red leaves dancing about my car in a blustery embrace. It elated my heart to see such a thing of beauty...it seemed as though it had been sent for me. And I had a deep, unshakable feeling that it was a message...a hug...from someone I had thought had long abandoned me.

That feeling brought tears to my eyes, so powerful was it.

Maybe this all seems crazy, blathering, non-sensicle. Perhaps those who do not believe in God will think me to be some over-the-top, preaching Christian, trying to force everyone to think and believe as I do. And perhaps it seems I'm overexaggerating a miniscule, natural event, and turning it into something meaningful.

But all that matters is that I felt it.

And it's nice to feel as though he's back.

Darkness

Should death be feared, or accepted?

Is it something we should come to terms with, or bitterly struggle to deny?

There are moments when I regard it with a sense of calm -- an understanding that it will come, and a peace about the passing. And then there are moments when the very idea terrifies me.

Perhaps the terrifying thing is not the act of death itself, but the "how".

And the "who". Who will I be when that day comes? Will I be the person that I want to be? Will I have shaped and molded myself into the type of person that I've worked these 23 years towards becoming?

And then the "what". What will I have done with the time that I've spent here? And what mistakes will I have made...what skeletons will follow me into my grave, and what will I fear dragging me down upon my arrival to the heavenly gates?

Perhaps it is not the idea of death itself, for me, which is terrifying...the fact that, in my life, I've made my mistakes, and my fear that I will not have had the time to correct them before I get there.

Or worse, that some are not correctable.