When you begin to strip off all of the crap in your life, well...a lot of things can happen.

One, you may become freaked out and what you're starting to see underneath and just stop, or run, or begin putting on the layers back on trying to make it look like it did before.

Or perhaps you'll become enlightened...you'll see some things about yourself that you didn't even know were you. But you'll go with it.

I am not going to write a day by day breakdown of my YS weekend in ATL. I'm not even going to summarize the conversations I want to be having with people. Because this is what I've learned...writing blogs just for the sake of having a few specific people read them is wrong. If you have something to talk with somebody about. You just need to talk to them.

Anything else is cowardly. And you're doing yourself and others and injustice. And you're inviting other people up into you mess and they don't belong there.




I have a really hard time praying and reading my Bible most of the time.
I don't know if this has something to do with me. If this has something to do with the way I'm feeling about God at this point in my life. I don't know.
But I struggle here.
I struggle with taking the time out of my day and giving it to God. And I know the rest of my day struggles because I don't do this.

I did get to have some pretty intense conversations with God this week though.
Sitting in the floor. With 5500 other people. There were a couple moments where I just hung my head and cried and told God absolutely everything that was going on in my heart up to that moment. Every fear. Every worry. The struggles, and how they were affecting me.

I didn't hear anything back.
But I don't feel like I'm stuck behind that prayer barrier anymore.
Or that it's impossible for me to cry.
I cried a lot this weekend. Like every 30 minutes. I cried.

There a couple things about God that I'm struggling with right now.

One has to do with this lesson that was taught at one of the General Sessions by a man named Louie Giglio.
He talked about how life is life. Bad things happen. People ask, why me? People don't understand why horrible things happen to them and their families. People don't understand why God chooses to be present in these situations some times, and in others he is silent.
It so easy for me to become bitter just thinking about this.
Really. I can feel it inside of my, welling up.
Because I know how that feels. I know how it feels to look and myself and at people in my life that I love more than anything and to ask God for help. To beg God for help. And to feel ignored.
To feel like God's to busy. To feel like God doesn't want to help me. Or my friends and family.

Louie didn't offer a straight up answer for why this is...but he talked about how we can have peace in knowing that God is present. He is good. He is sovereign. And that there is peace in that. There is peace in knowing that we truly have no control, but even when bad things happen, God is sovereign. He's in control. And he brings good things.

I have thought about this. I have prayed about this. I've let my tears leak and my heart bleed out onto the floor at the Georgia World Conference Center. And I still. Have. No. Peace.
In fact, things continued to happen. More things that I had to struggle and stumble over. I don't have any peace with the other stuff yet. How am I supposed to have peave with this crap too, God?

The peace hasn't come. It isn't coming. And so I am having a hard time with this. With believing this. With cashing into this idea. I need peace in my day. I do. I need it desperately. And there is none to be had. I don't know how to get it. And if the crap is going to continue to flow, I don't just want to be sitting on the floor, cringing, waiting for the next blow to fall...And that's where I am. That's what my faith had been boiled down to.

It concerns me terribly, that I have just boiled my faith down to doubt.

I don't want faith like this. But it's all I know.
And I feel like it's God's fault. Which perhaps is incredible immature. But I feel like he's conditioned me to this point to feel like this.
I feel like I haven't caught a break in a really, really long time.
I don't want a life full of just waiting for the next bad thing to happen.
But I don't know what to do with this.
I don't know where peace comes from.

I'm ordering the mp3 of this lesson. Perhaps listening again will bring something to light.

Another problem I'm having...
"Our struggle are not against flesh and blood."...but against the dark. against the wickedness.

Ya know. God is soveriegn. But he allows for free will.
Which means people. People make decisions. People hurt people. People do things. People say hurtful things. People. Flesh and blood.

Maybe I'm struggling because I'm upset with some flesh and blood people right now, and I can't seem to play it off on the dark, spiritual forces card....but is it really fair to let people off the hook this easily?

I dunno. I'm just not buying it, God. I'm just not buying it.

Synopisis.
YS has left me heart broken. Confused. Angry. Doubtful.
Shallow pockets.
And a bleeding heart.


The acoustic soul can play some raw, painful songs.


---Does my peace come from knowing that Jesus knows and has experienced my hurts with me? Initmately?-- I'm not sure what peace is to be found there.

--Do I really not have to live this way?--How else would I live?