A Dare for You Risktakers.

Just because I acknowledge, reflect, and write about the paradox that our lives can simultaneously bring supreme joys and piercing pains does not mean it is any easier for me to live out the days where those two clash. Today was one of those days. Today was a day to choose.

What did I choose? I chose to seek out and actually talk to God honestly right when the day got rough. I chose to not default into my normal coping behavior, attempting to simply distract myself from the conflicting emotions. I chose not to numb myself.

I can look back and clearly see the different periods of my life where I daily operated on an idea of God versus God the personal God.

I think we tend to default to keeping God in the abstract, idea category. In fact, I think if you are not careful, that is the framework you can start sliding back into without even realizing it.

I sympathize with people who only know the idea of God. That did not satisfy anything in me. How distant, how unmoving, how unrealistically “nice” it all sounded to hear people say the catch-phrases “God is our comfort”, “He knows you”, or "just trust in Him". Phrases like that felt like descriptions of something I had not really experienced.

I have found that an abstract idea of God does not address the current, in-my-face issues; it does not deal with the suffering, pain, and frustration happening right now. It all just boils down to the same philosophy as “go to your happy place”. An idea God offers only a phony sense of comfort that shatters as soon as any force of unfixable pain hits you where you it counts… and stays.

An idea God is like trying to put a band aid across an open, deep, gaping, wound. It is horrifying inadequate.

I used to think I was tough. I genuinely believed that I could outlast pain, could will myself through the worst. And for a long time that worked. I found ways to bury, to store, to funnel my pain into something else. But then the real storms hit... After going through seasons of inexplicable pain, frustration, anger, and true aching, who I thought I was took a beating. She didn’t last. She broke. She lost.

But it was in the midst of the breaking, in the moments where I found myself having to face the incomprehensible: my inability to last, it was those exact moments when I met God the person, the being, the real GOD.

I am talking about the God who is THE ONLY being who understands me fully; not my family, not my very closest friends, not even my husband. The one who understands the crazy details and nuances of my personality, my emotions, and my thoughts. I am talking about the God who patiently waits for me when I first run to every single loving, meaningful human relationship and then am frustrated when they all somehow fail at satisfying the deep longing in my soul.... that God. The God who is now my most intimate relationship and truly fulfills that longing in my heart to be known...the sweetest love I have ever found.

I am talking about the God who is the ONLY hope for finding a satisfying clarity when I have so worked myself into knots that I cannot even get out of my own head and verbalize anything! I am not talking about the clarity that you try to convince yourself might be there just so you can calm down… I mean the clarity that can mysteriously settle down the craziest, most worked up, knotted, side of my brain when it gets trapped inside itself.

I am talking about the God who gives me the most illogical, inexplicable and yet undeniable peace. And no, not a bogus peace that somehow means all that pain just vanished or got sucked into some temporary void. That does not really exist in my world.

If there is any part of you that still believes that God might exist, and if you have not met Him yet, may I suggest something?

Try talking directly to God instead of just thinking thoughts about Him. But here is the hardest part, but also the most important: you need to be brutally honest.

Trust me, He can handle it.

I dare you….go there with Him.

It will change everything.

#pain #prayer