New Ideas

It's been far too long since I posted, partly because some of the issues I'm wrestling with are just to personal to put out there, partly because I just haven't been in the mood, and partly because I haven't had the time or desire to make it happen. However, here I am again.

I've been doing a lot of thinking/wrestling over the issue I raised in my last post relating to that sense of God withholding Himself. I've hashed the matter through, and though I haven't really settled on an answer that fully satisfies me yet, I feel like I may be getting situated in a direction that could prove enlightening with a bit of forward momentum.

There is a thought that is slowly wending its way through my brain like a flashlight searching through a dark, abandoned building. I've been feeling angry at God for all of this, recognizing that it's not really His fault, but still feeling like He withheld what I needed to the point that it put me in a position where I was more vulnerable to weakness than I should have been. Granted, my choices are my own, but perhaps if He had done things differently, I wouldn't have made those choices. So I've been kinda pissed. Pissed that I was (and still am) weak and vulnerable. Pissed that He could have done something about it and didn't. Pissed that I trusted Him and walked away empty-handed. Somewhere in there I know it's not His fault, that He was the wise one and the love I needed was always there, but I haven't sorted it through yet. So this new idea is beginning to infiltrate. It's hard for me to articulate because I'm still in that place where my fingers are just brushing the edges of something unfamiliar. The best I can say at the moment is that perhaps it wasn't God who left me out in the cold. Perhaps it's not His fault, not because, as I've been angry about, He failed to do what I thought He said He would. Perhaps what I was taught about Him was wrong. Perhaps I was trained up in perspectives that weren't quite on target.

No, my Fundy friends, don't freak out on me. I'm not going anywhere weird. I'm just saying that perhaps my understanding of God as the Lover or the Father was influenced incorrectly by the people who taught me these things. It isn't that He isn't the Lover or the Father or the Fulfiller, but perhaps what I was taught to expect from Him in those roles led me away from who and what He really is in them.

I realize that may not make much sense and that this posting is rather scattered, but my thoughts on the subject are still very fragmented and hesitant. It's hard to retrain the mind and explore new ideas when you've grown so accustomed to the old ones that you could walk through them blindfolded. However, as I start figuring my way around in here and find out if this new way of thinking might actually be truth, I'll keep you posted. (Haha. Posted. Get it? LOL. Oh, never mind.)