So how do you really do With Me when it comes to Jesus, who's somebody you can't see, hear, or touch?
For me, being With Jesus means that I let him into the deepest emotional part of myself.
No "shoulds."
I wrote those three sentences a couple of days ago, and I was just going to sit with that idea of letting Jesus into the deepest emotional part of myself, no matter what, and then write to you about the wonderful process that ensued.
Yeah.
It was all going well, until I sat down at the computer to feel what I'm feeling right now, and let Jesus into it.
Here is what happened. Just now. I swear.
"Is this even real?"
"Is Jesus truly alive?"
"Nobody sees him. Nobody talks to him."
"Maybe we're all making this up."
That is my brain this morning, people: doubting.
These are my emotions: anxious.
It's like Anne Lamott says in Traveling Mercies:
"I was terribly erratic: feeling so holy and serene some moments that I was sure I was going to end up dating the Dalai Lama. Then the grief and craziness would hit again, and I would be in Broken Mind, back in the howl."
I don't know what to do with this, other than to let Jesus into this space, too.
If he exists.
Which I think he does.
Pretty sure.
I'm also going to chill with this quote that just popped up on my Facebook feed:
"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers . . . Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day." Rainier Marie Rilke
I think, if Jesus is real, then this is how he is with me: patient with all the unsolved things, even with the fact that sometimes I think he's not even real.
If Jesus is really real, then he gets me right where I am, and loves me right where I am.
So I'm going to be where I am.
In every other relationship that I know of, that's where deep, true connection happens: In The Real.
So there's the Real.
I'm not happy about it, but there it is: doubting and anxious and some-crazy-how, trusting the Love.
Now I'm going to sit here with my stress turtle for a while and wonder why I ever wanted to write a series for Lent.
