The Inevitable Penalty

Today is the first day of the last month of my 50th year. When this year first began, I had high hopes of transforming myself into a thinner, sexier, more fit, more disciplined, more organized, more spiritual, wiser, more mature, happier version of me. And, honestly, all those modifiers carried pretty much the same level of importance to me. (OK, maybe "more organized" was a few rungs down the ladder.)

Well, the end's in sight, folks, and I cannot tell you how devastating -- how almost crushing -- it is to find that I am still the same old, unorganized, undisciplined, unfit, overweight, folly-bound, immature, often-unhappy me. And in terms of my spirituality, I am still seeking, still longing, still hoping beyond hope that God is true, but I am not certain that I have a relationship with him.

I cannot sing as my mother did about walking in the garden: "And he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own. And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known." I'm sure some people would dismiss that as sentimental gibberish, but I think it's beautiful. And possible. I just don't have it.

Oswald's words today suggest that my failure to find the intimacy I seek might stem from clinging to my right to myself: "The moment you realize God's purpose, which is to get you rightly related to Himself and then to your fellow men, He will tax the last limit of the universe to help you take the right road."

I am still trying to come to terms, then, with the fact that God's purpose may not be to make me the best me I can possibly be -- at least not in any overt way that makes sense to me.

He has shown you, Barbara, what is good and what the Lord requires of you -- to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God (Micah 6:8). I'm making a little progress on the humble part.