I think I owe this blog at least five posts...I'm lagging a little in this discipline of mine.

What I want most of all is to love and to be loved without fear. To be unafraid, to trust completely and unquestioningly in God's goodness; or, even if I question, to be able to have it out squarely with Him, not necessarily demanding an answer to the pain as in Job, but trusting that by the end of my complaint I will be forced to acknowledged the immutable conclusion that God is good and that He loves us perfectly as in many of the Psalms. Every year there is some new agony to face, as if I am addicted to pain and misery. I am not at that place now, but it usually comes around midyear or later.

The uppermost question used to be "Why?" In my most lucid moments I knew it was about pride and going through the refiner's fire and all sorts of things. In my most spiritual moments I realise I will not know until the last trumpet sounds. In moments of despondency I decided that it was some sort of punishment meted out by a God uneven in justice...but somehow thought I deserved it at the same time. Through the darkest moments of wretched thought, sometimes all that kept me going was the thought that God is good...no matter what I face. It didn't make me happy, and it didn't resolve the issue immediately. If anything, I was more unhappy realising that God's goodness never changed even through the pain. But the difference this conviction made was this: it gave me the strength to claim my life for Christ again, to rebuke the false thoughts and doubts and make decisions in spite of what I felt.

And so now I am on the beach, strolling with Christ, enjoying the respite until the Valley of the Shadow of Death comes again, whatever form it may take this year. Perhaps it will not (I always live in the hope that I will have one year with no major episode of sadness). But this is my life and I have accepted it. I do not need to fear.

When I ask "Why?" I suppose the implied question is also "Why me out of all others?" This blog helps me see that we are all singled out in God's purpose, each with our own road to walk, or in Henri Nouwen's metaphor, with our own cup to drink. I see my life travelling in cycles, but they are redemptive cycles, not destructive cycles. Each year seems to have more pain and fear than the last, but each year I also grow deeper into a life that is free of that. For some of us, the cycles may span more than a year...or there might not be a cycle at all, just a long meandering journey with surprises (whether nasty or nice) around each bend.