The Shack

I've been reading The Shack and it's been so good in so many ways. I don't know where to start so it's always good for me to start writing about how I don't know what to write : )  It just seems easier that way. There are so many different thoughts going on in my head, which is normal for me, but when I'm trying to write it makes it difficult. I guess that's one of the reasons writing is so good because it makes you sort through and define the mess of thought and emotions. 

That word mess made me think of one part in the Shack when the character who is the Holy Spirit is talking to the main character, Mack, about how his soul is a mess. The Holy Spirit calls the mess of his soul "wild and beautiful and perfectly in process". He (actually she) goes on and says "To you it seems like a mess but to me I see a perfect pattern emerging and growing and alive --a living fractal".  I'd like to think that is something the Holy Spirit would say to me. That he would say something like, "It's okay you don't know how to do everything perfectly, that not everything is perfectly in place and orderly." I feel really overcome with love and gratitude at the way God feels about me and interacts with me. After I was reading tonight I knew God had some things to tell me...to put in my heart.  He knows me. He knows my desires and my heart. He knows I've been pursuing him for as long as I can remember, not perfectly, and not usually the way I would like to, but nontheless, I have pursued him. He knows I love him. He knows me so much better than I know myself. I know that I need to stop feeling like I need to make him and others see that I am really a nice person or that I do really want to do absolutely everything that is possible in my lifetime. I'm 30 years old and I want to be done with trying to prove myself (even if it's just in my head) and I want to get on with living my life. 

Another cool tidbit from The Shack is that Jesus talks about how we are supposed to live in the present but so many of us live in either the past or the future. I am terrible at living in the present and I know this will only hinder me from truly living my life the way that I can. Instead of thinking and planning for how I can make sure to do everything right or already accepting the fact that I can't do everything right and getting discouraged...I could just LIVE! What happens after I hold God's hand and jump isn't up to me. There's so much to accepting the "mess" inside our soul, or that is our soul I should say. It isn't about trying to convince myself that I'm okay, it's about accepting and believing that I am loved. Profoundly. Unconditionally. With no need for a test to see if I live up to a standard. Christine, are you hearing this? Sorry, I just needed to make sure all this preaching to myself isn't going to be in vain : )  

One last thing, even though I could probably write for a lot longer but I need to go to bed. I took a personality test that Josh had to take for one of his classes and reading about myself tied into everything I've been talking about. It's funny to read about yourself in personality tests because on one hand I'm thinking "wow, I sound like a great person". But on the other hand I'm thinking "yeah, that's what I want to be but always feel like I don't quite get there". Tonight when God was speaking to me I felt like he was putting in my heart a sense of reaching out and accepting what I was reading about my personality. Of reaching out and accepting that I love Jesus and somehow, in the midst of my messy soul, he's sitting there basking in the beauty of it all. I don't have to understand or have it all figured out but one thing is for sure...I'm loved, profoundly and unconditionally.