mess

mess (noun) - a dirty, untidy, or disordered condition

that is probably the best way you could describe my current condition.  I mean typically I'm a bit of a mess, but it's worse right now; it's a deeper kind of mess right now. it's 3:24 in the morning. blogspot won't tell you that because my timing is off on my blog. but as I am writing it is nearly halfway between three and four am.  and I don't get myself.  even before I left texas I was feeling a bit of a disconnect with myself. I don't know if you're familiar with those, but I am well aquainted with them.  but now it's like there is a wall there.  a wall between the me I show everyone and the me I am underneath it all.  and I can't get through to her, the one underneath it all.  I've been reading my favorite quotes and my old blog posts and trying to remind myself who I am, but I can't feel it.  I'm not in touch with those deep emotions that inspire me to write and love and believe.  it's like I know who I am, but I can't feel it.  this will either make complete sense to you, or make me sound like a lunatic.  take it as you will.  perhaps it's that creative gene in me, right?  that's what we all tell ourselves to help us sleep at night.  but I think it's really more me running from God.  and I really don't have a reason to.  because when I'm in line with Him, in love with Him, I am perfectly in tune with the woman He created me to be.  I feel deeply all the time; I have things to write about; I'm able to see what's going on beneath the surface.  but something is keeping me from Him.  and I've been analyzing every part of my life trying to figure out what it is.  I thought it was maybe something that I wanted to do that I knew wasn't His will for me, but I've stopped wanting those things I used to want so badly.  I'm cleaning up in terms of the things that I do.  so I don't think it's that.  I haven't been reading my Bible much at all lately and I haven't been sleeping at good hours and I'm ten hours away from my family, from the people that know me and understand me and love me anyway, for the first time in my life.  but I just can't convince myself that that's it either.  the desire to read God's Word is usually a physical manifestation of loving Him and being in tune with Him (for me, at least).  it goes deeper than that.  and I have no idea where the root of it is.  so I don't know what to do about it.  I mean there is actually nothing I can really do about it.  the only thing I can do is let go and let God sweep me up into His arms and remind me that I'm not alone, on my own.  but it is oh so hard to do that.  I like my control.  I like being able to determine problems and fix them myself.  but it is getting harder to keep up this exterior, to keep up appearances, to fake it 'til I make it.  I am a mess.  but only as a mess can I demonstrate to the rest of the messy world the glory of the God that takes wretches like me and turns them into beautiful masterpieces.

"I wait until my life has become so completely unlivable and the person I am has become so deeply unmoored from reality and hope and goodness, that I break down and pray." - Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines. I'm there, God.