Darkness and Guilt
I've felt a darkness of sorts pressing in on me today, God. It seems attached to the guilt... which is attached to the new awareness I have... I think back over the last couple of years and I know that the dark, the bad, the wrong is not all there is... but it's all I see right now. It's where my mind instantly goes. And it makes me nauseous.
So much guilt wells up in me right now over what I've done... over how I've conducted myself. I used to keep my body safe, my mind strong, my heart protected and pure... and in such a short time I've traded it, without even really knowing it. I think I somehow thought that I could just "add" a few things to who I am. But every bit I did myself took a little more away from You.
Or maybe it's like a seasoning I tried to add myself, and ruined the flavor of the whole thing...
I don't know. I see, right now in my mind, recent events and not-so-recent events and I feel like they are converging somehow, into this thing, this beast, this one massive sin, the mother-load of all short comings... not just "a (large) number of times I have failed" but The Failure, proper noun, so enormous it spans years... Why is that? Why are they doing that in my heart? Is it because they are linked/related? Ah, it is, isn't it. I remember when mom told me... "Jessica, don't you see? It's your heart. The condition of your heart. That's why. Big or small, it's all falling short, it's all symptoms of the condition."
Then I feel the urge to face off with it and do battle, to conquer it---that rush of adrenaline and hope, like "Hey, now that I am seeing so much more clearly, I see I'm the good guy and God is on my side, so I'm going to war with this sucker." ...but then I realize how small that "my side"-that-God's-on really is right now... and how big I let that monster get. And then to make matters worse, I see that the monster is actually a growth on that little bitty me... It's attached to me... Because I let it in... I let it grow... I nurtured it and let it become what it became... it... it's a part of me...
And there is an enormous weight of guilt that accompanies that knowledge... and it began haunting me today. Not sure exactly what to do about it. Not sure exactly how to proceed from here... I know I am just to keep moving forward, "just do the next right thing..." I know that it will take time to feel the weight of that guilt lifted off of me. And I don't know how it will even happen. Do I resolve it moment by moment, mess-up by mess-up?
Oh... I don't resolve anything, do I? You do that, don't You? If I am to be restored, only You can do it. If I have value, it is because of You inside me. If I have anything, it is because You give it to me.
This will take practice for me, this surrendering of control until I relearn it so well that I do it better than breathing. It's mental more than anything...
Relearning, retraining... On the way home from work today, I was thinking about how You have made my body a temple. My body is a temple, my body is a temple... And I saw this pristine temple, well-kept and clean and maybe not the biggest or best or shiniest or most full of treasure, but the best it could be--and that was pretty good, considering. And then I saw the same temple a few years later and it was a completely different place...
God, not only did I stop tending to the temple... but I damaged it as well... and then I didn't repair it... and then I did it some more... and then, I let security slack in my lazy and preoccupied management of the temple and I let others in, outsiders, and they robbed it...
And I didn't even know what was going on... I didn't even know I'd been robbed... I was too busy partying upstairs in the banquet room...
Oh, wow... I think I'm going to be sick.
I can't believe You still want this temple... I can't believe You still have me taking care of it. If I were You, I'd have fired me. If I were You, I'd have beaten me within an inch of my life and then fired me... It's what I deserve...
I'm so sorry, God. I'm so sorry...
Yes, I hear Your voice, I hear what You are saying, but I don't even know where to start or if I have the strength. I know, I know! Sitting down in the middle of the temple and crying about the mess won't make it go away, it won't undo any of it. But what about this mess---and what about the integrity of the temple? God, it is compromised, it is defiled. I can't clean that up, I can't put that back, I can't undo that. I am horrified and riddled with guilt--what have I done? How do I undo this?
This weight on my chest is so heavy...
