Nashville, TN: Today I joined four other women, unknown to me before today, and began another leg of the spiritual journey of life I continue to stay on (though wobbling and teetering all too often). As I mentioned before, I was encouraged to join a once-a-month spiritual-directed group, led by a sweet woman/therapist who could possibly be a double for my mother in the movie of my life.
The loose idea of the group is that it is similar to therapy, except instead of just divulging all of your deepest, darkest secrets (to a group of strangers -- at least until we meet again), you try to understand where God is in the midst of the specific scenario.
Of course, everything we say in the group is confidential, so I won't share the specifics of our first encounter, but I will say that for the first time in a long time, I was able to name some of my own fear that has been in my heart for a while. Not that I was avoiding it, per se, but that I just didn't know what specifically it was that was making me a little crazy (more than normal, that is).
I have gotten used to repeating the story I have held onto for years -- in my darkest hour, God left me. I lost the things that gave me my identity and in the search to redefine who I really was (not based on job or relationship status, but rather, but who I was from the inside out), I felt like I was grasping at thin air, since God was nowhere to be found. After sharing that story again today, the fear finally found its voice and I was able to bring light to it:
I'm scared He's going to leave me again.
As part of this group, once a person is done talking for their alloted time, we all fall into silence and spend the next few minutes praying for the one who has just finished speaking. After my weeping confession to these women (who I'm pretty sure I will become very close with after a short amount of time), I closed my eyes and could literally feel the energy in the room surround and penetrate me. I was scared to open my eyes, for fear that the laser beams of love would cease.
During that brief but powerful time, the story as I had come to know far too well, shifted. I started to see that God never was gone out of the picture altogether, but I simply did not have the armor or tools to know how to deal with this type of a blow. I did not know how to process this loss of self and just wasn't prepared.
There is no guarantee that this kind of ache won't happen again. And, to be honest, the only thing that we actually do know for sure is that suffering happens. I only hope that the next time, I won't be so quick to think God has left me, but rather, He has now left me with the appropriate armor and tools to stay in the game.