In the morning, when you finally go...

Well, there's been something off about relationships lately. I'm hoping that whatever disorder that I have with relationships will dissolve (or resolve, rather) as I grow and become more mature. Maybe I need to go ahead and follow through with the claims that I've made to actually read all of those books that people have given me. Better yet, how about I read the Bible.

I have questions about too many things and I find myself distracted by too many things to be able to take the big questions, the ones that matter, down to that place where it's Jesus giving me counsel about them. I'm sick of hiding things in my heart. I'm sick of believing that people aren't being real with me, because I haven't been real with them. But, it's not everyday that I think this way. And I don't think I'm meant to worry or to constantly find fault in myself and in the ways that I haven't been listening to Jesus about my questions. I think he wants me to let him help me and let him live in me.

It freaks me out sometimes that even when someone else is talking about Jesus in a negative way, or even positing that Jesus had intimate relationships with men (that is, more intimate than mere friends), that I don't stand up for him. Or that I would say that I go to church when someone asks if I'm "a practicing Christian." But I don't make efforts to explain the possible difference between "practicing a religion" and "following Jesus."

What does it mean, and why do I feel like I'm not really doing it?

That question is where the fault lies, I guess. It's not what I'm doing or what I do. That can't be the point and that can't be what makes my life different from anyone else's life--anyone who may be an atheist or who may pray to Buddha, etc. and who tries to make life meaningful and significant by helping people, or being nice, or whatnot. That's not and will never be enough--it won't ever, as I've experienced it, convince me that I've done a good job or that I was a good person.

That realness factor that I was talking about earlier... I guess that's part of the problem. Everyone else might experience life differently, but (for me) as life gets dirtier and rubs off onto what I consider my person and identity--as I find it harder and harder to separate my identity from the messages that I hear in the world--, I find it that much harder to feel like I'm being real and true to the world. Maybe this has something to do with what I see as my relationship-disorder (which, for all I know, may be all inside my head and in need of the remedy of pure counselling (Jesus)). In any case, I know that my desire to meet someone with whom all of my secrets and fears and questions can be let into the air can only be fulfilled in that one person, who is more than one. I can call him counselor, or friend, or father, or brother, or... you know. What comes to mind, I can call him that, too (Yep, that's right--even that.).

Maybe that's enough talk.

There's listening, too.