Sometimes it is all too much, you know.

Some days I go through the world, almost able to believe that I am in control of my own destiny, that I’m autonomous and I’m doing okay. But there are days too when I feel as though I must absorb the pain of everyone and everything, when I bleed out poetry in words and pictures because speaking stark truth makes it hurt worse.

Do you know I sometimes forget that I am real? And then one day I wake again and I get scared. My old habits wake up and I look at myself and see how far short I fall of everything I thought I wanted to be when I was younger and spiritual and safe enough.

I go running to Him who never moved, try to make… something His fault – I am never sure what, because I know that He is good, that I am not condemned, no matter what I feel. But then I try to make things my fault, pick up blame and salve my old, tired conscience with shame, still arranging, still trying to fix me and the whole wide world. I don’t know how to be free, not really, not with all the voices and all the world set against Christ in me, being big enough.

The world’s on fire, as Sarah McLachlin sings, and it’s more than I can handle. There is so LITTLE I can do to help. I want to believe that the beauty I pursue is enough, that it can help others breathe the way it helps me, but some days I wonder. I want to believe that being who I am is a way God can use me in the world, but I’ve been learning that a whole lot of the world might actually despise who I am.

Religion and culture, faith and sight, grace and the law – it all runs together in the should. I am not what people who love me wish I were. How could God be okay with me if I don’t measure up to even the friends who have shown me such care?

I wonder if I love God. If I love others. If my life is bearing the fruit even my closest friends once told me wasn’t there. I am hard on myself; I am afraid of others being hard on me.

And I remember. I remember the soft things, the safe things, the homemade apple pies and the scent of wood smoke, the feel of the wind on my face, calm voices talking in the living room after I was put to bed. I remember the beautiful things, flower gardens, happy moments, silly pictures. It is the wonder that brings the tears out of the fear, the exquisite that soothes the ache I can’t ever really shake while I am alive in the world.

There is too much. Too much noise, too much grown-up stuff. I want it to be okay to not know. To be right where I am and care for the needs that are right here in my house, in my heart.

I ask Pete for help. He tells me what I know, what I’m doubting, that Jesus is all I need. That worship is living as God made me to live, breathing just like He created me to do, delighting in Him where I find Him, letting Him carry me, trusting that His righteousness is enough. He trades beauty for ashes; He changes me in His time, leaves me where I am sometimes for His purpose and His people who need me to not be all that perfect I used to be when I was covering up and hiding Him under my better ideas of Christian.

I fall back. Try to be still. Let the ache wash over me, and the beauty too, and keep breathing.