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| | Well, This is LameI admit it. I have been a lame blogger for 2-ish years.There has been very little blogging (at least, compared to my heydey a few years back when I was blogging almost daily), and there has been almost no substance whatsoever in that time.
I want to try to change that. I want to get my blogging mojo back. So I'm going to try to start. At this moment, I'm leaning back in my chair, eyes closed (and if I opened them, I would be looking at the ceiling), and I'm just going to write whatever happens to pass from my brain to my fingers. Afterward, I'll go back through and fix all the typos.
Among the things that has been affecting me more than I've been letting on is church. Now, I love Edgewater Presbyterian. My closest friends go there, I feel that I have a real "local" family there, and that place has been a sort of "home base" for me for the past four years.
And I haven't darkened the doors since Easter Sunday.
It's hard to qualify it, but somehow, it just hasn't been working for me lately. It's not a crisis of faith; my faith is still reasonably strong, and my belief structure appears to be intact. But something about EPC just hasn't seemed to provide the spiritual nourishment that I require lately. I've talked to Barb about this, and while I have no intention of leaving EPC, I am taking license to do some exploring, to try to find out what makes me tick, theologically.
In that vein, I have been attending quite a few services at Holy Covenant United Methodist Church lately, with Ken. It's an impressive place. The services are contemporary, but for some reason, that doesn't really bug me. I am a pretty hard-core traditionalist in my worship, and the idea of me enjoying a contemporary worship service is, plainly put, bizarre. Mind you, I am not completely sold on these services, but I don't walk out the doors thinking, "Dear Lord, what was that? Really, G, that's not what I'm looking for." And yes, I sometimes address God as "G" or, "The Big G." I think He's cool with that.
Holy Covenant has been doing a sermon series lately on Difficult questions, and I've made a point of picking the ones that are of interest to me, and making sure I'm there. The one that I think will be really helpful as I contend with this time of spiritual discernment is the one scheduled for May 18, on prayer and how to do it meaningfully. I make no secret about the fact that prayer is my weakest point, religiously. I'm generally not comfortable praying aloud, and I don't pray that much in the silence of my heart either. I'm not good about asking God for things, because I have some notion that I shouldn't ask for something that's going to interfere with His will, and if He intends for me to have something, I'm going to get it whether I pray for it or not.
When I do pray, it tends to be in thanks. For strength, or perseverance, or whatever it is that got me through whatever rough patch I just experienced. Sort of a "That was a very valuable lesson, thank you for that" kind of thing. Sometimes, in my moments of deepest distress, I'll pray, "Okay, I get it. There's a lesson to be learned here. Could you please shed a little light on it, and then let me move on?" To be fair, that one happened a LOT when I was unemployed.
So, I am hopeful that, somehow, this sermon coming up on the 18th will help me with my prayer life.
In less than one month, I turn 30. My general thought on this is, "How the fuck did that happen?" I'm not particularly upset by it...I'm just a bit shocked. 30 doesn't look anything like I imagined it would. Granted, after the year I've had, I'm quite done with being 29, thank you very much.
And then there's Ken. I am quite mad about the boy. But, my chief concern is the timing of all this. My intention, when I moved into this apartment, was to be single for a WHILE, and sort of get a better grip on who I was and what that meant. I don't deny that I lost track of myself during my relationship with Jerry, and my identity, as I knew it, suffered quite a bit. The idea of living alone and being romantically unattached was spectacularly appealing to me, as a chance to sort of live by my own set of rules and standards, and behave or misbehave as I saw fit. Then along comes this really terrific guy, who for whatever reason seems to think I'm extraordinary. And six months from now, that would be an ideal set up. And really, when I think about it, it's foolish of me to grumble about it simply because it happened before I was ready for it.
I do, however, need to get him to stop talking about the future. While I definitely see the possibility of a future with him (why else would I continue dating him?), it's not something I really want to think about very much right now. Firstly, we've only been dating for two and a half months. Secondly, I'm just not in a place where I want to think "long-term relationship" any more than is strictly necessary. I KNOW that it will be at least two years before I entertain the idea of living with him, and I'm not sure I'll be convinced to do it even then. I need to have this conversation with him. Don't know how he's going to feel about that. But I need to nip it before it becomes bigger than it already is.
And I'm debating grad school again. It might be time to really start making a move in that direction again. I'll try to do some research this week.
And now, it's past my bedtime. We'll talk more later. I think I'm going to try to set aside time regularly to do this, because I'm starting to remember how cathartic this whole writing thing can be. So, I'm going to fix my typos and go to bed.
Be good!
| | | Posted 5/4/2008 11:22 PM - 3 comments
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