In the Beginning

I think I was thirteen. Maybe fourteen. It's hard to remember now. It was that pivotal moment in your life, where you have the first notion that you're not a child anymore, but still caught in the agony of the in between. Maybe agony's too strong a word, but how else can you define the angst of having your identity dissolved into a puddle of questions and hormones? I wish I could still see the scene with vivid clarity, but even the short span of nine to ten years has blurred it into some mythological event that I can only recount with hyperbole.

I remember sitting on my bedroom floor a lot. The pink carpet rough, my cheeks stained with tears, and my entire being wracked with fear. I had somehow convinced myself that God was disappointed with me, that I wasn't living up to those oh-so-holy notions of what God had intended for me. I was only thirteen, and already my life was a failure. I couldn't find the right words to apologize, I only knew how to make promises that I would do better. Mostly, I just coveted love--God's love of me, sure, but even more so, I yearned to love God. No one had ever explained to me how. They told me how to "know" God, and I figured that this was as good of a step as any. So I began in the beginning, in Genesis, and kept reading that King James, highlighting and underlining, until my Bible matched all those I considered highly devoted to this craft of faith. I knew nothing more about God at the close of Revelation then I knew before. I only had more questions.

That was in the beginning. In the now, I'm finishing up my first year as a divinity student, working at a church as a youth minister, and experiencing a whole horseload of shitty other emotions (though, to be fair, some of them shouldn't be classified as "shitty," some of them have been quite wonderful.) But I'm still sitting with a lot of questions, and if possible, seemingly even more emotions. Despair, anger, fear, and apathy all crowd in like unwanted guests in this party of my current life. I keep seeing glimpses of hope and love, but they always seem to be talking to others.

I dreamed the other night, that I had a public journal to write all these things down. These are things I want to be able to express without censoring myself (something most who know me well would laugh at me about, as much of what I say is candid to say the least).

So this is it. This is my beginning.