The Shack.

Hello Friends.

It has been a long while; a long while since I've felt like myself. I have some major de-compressing to do, some culture shock to get over still, but double the friends in facebook to remember my time in Switzerland by. (Aside: There it is again.. ending sentences with prepositions... can't that little rule go by the way of wearing white after Labor Day? I just can't seem to avoid it...)

I just finished a sort of "ordained" sickness. I felt like junk on Sunday when I went to church and felt even junkier on Monday morning. I didn't go into work and I was pretty much out like the losing end of a prize fight until 3pm that day and didn't feel much better Tuesday morning. But while I was lying there comatose, I did get some quality reading in. It was work to prop up my head, which weighed exactly eight-hundred pounds according to my sore neck, but once I got it positioned, I spent some sweet time with God and read The Shack.

He reminded me that he invented laughter. He reminded me that he cares for sick kids, and for broken men, and for the ugliest of sinners. He reminded me that he likes Over The Rhine and the soundtrack to Juno too.

He remined me that life with Him is not a dry mouthful of saltine crackers with no milk to be found. He told me tenderly that life with Him is beauty, honey, light, and song. It's decadence in food and drink. In meatloaf and chocolate chip cookies, and fresh baked bread and canoes and blue workshirts and tool belts and cars. He is in every single good created thing. He's in it all. And he likes it. Really. He listens to angry music and angry souls and loves them in return.

He's not grandpa. Judging. Hating, Rueing the day you were born. Still pissed at you for nailing his boy to the Cross. Nope. Not even close. Life with him is not dictated by your last mistake.

He's smiling, hoping, waiting for you to walk up to the Gate so he can bear hug you, make you collard greens, show you more of Himself, teach you more things, and laugh with you.

Not sure why I can't grasp this very well. I want rules to follow because I can do the rules. I am pretty good at the rules. (Well kinda..) I want to know that I am going to be ok. And I think that I am. It will be ok. In this life, maybe not, but I'll never be alone, and in the next life, I will be playing in waterfalls and walking on water with Jesus.

He isn't the author of disaster and evil. He will bring good out of it anyway, but he doesn't purpose it or punish us with it. Man, why is that so hard for me to wrap my thick head around? Why do I re-learn this every freaking time? I'm really not doing this justice here in my petty amateur ramblings, you need to just read this book and see what you think. It's fresh water on your soul. Any person feeling like God has given them the short end, needs to pick this up and read it.

Also, my streak of running away is over. I am done with religion, done with guilt, done with anything that is not in line with the Truth of who God is. I do not want people looking at me to see some one beating herself (and others) up with a shower rod. That isn't who God is. It's not who I want them to see in me.

Hallelujah.

I'm single again, by the way. Hard stuff, but it is the right answer right now.

I'm at more peace than I have been for well over a year.

It's good to be home.