Just a stranger on the bus

God what a day. How does it go...God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference...
i am happy to have a blog, a journal, and a canvas as large as the world to express myself if i so choose. i am also delighted that i have the choice to say nothing. sometimes i even exercise it.
i have an ache in my spirit today. i wake up a little tired from a late night, still a little sore from a lingering cold. opening my email, Facebook and Myspace pages i am confronted one by one with despair, fury, sadness, pain, illness, decay, contentiousness, raging superficiality, piercing loneliness, apathy and one bitch slappin shitstorm after another. sorry about the choice of words but sometimes i just can't come up with anything more genteel because i find that this world is not genteel, know what i'm sayin?
in this corner is God, heartless ringmaster of the barbaric circus we call life. the doting shepherd who breaks the legs of the lamb who strays too far. the silent, implacable figure on death row for not fitting into the box we have so thoughtfully created for Him.
there were alot of years that i didn't go to church. i didn't even think about it. i had no use for it. i was young, full of strength and dreams and defenses. i intended to do it all myself, because God knows nobody else had ever truly been in my corner: from abuse veiled as dysfunction in my family, to a love life that seethed anger, violence, sorrow and brokeness, to dreams stifled by physical and spiritual and emotional illness, to the expectations of people all around me that i could never quite fullfill...if i was going to come into my own as a full blown disappointment i wanted to do it on my own and have no one in my face about it. i had no use for trust, and a million arguments for it being a bad idea.
God, being the gracious one that He is, bowed out as requested. things got worse. lonelier, angrier, bloodier. i became, for a season, everyone and everything i have ever hated and feared in my life. nothing was my fault. i had no nerves, no feelings, and no accountibility. only a great black hole of anger, sorrow and need. glossed over by a mask of normal.
what changed? i would love to tell you that a gang of angels came in and kicked my ass. God spoke to me in a dream. the bird of paradise flew up my nose. typically, stuff like that doesn't happen to me.
i think i just got sick of the whining sound of my own voice.
at some horrible point i gave up and left the gate open, and He came in again, deeper than i ever let Him in before. i gave Him charge of things i never gave Him before, like my wounds, my slights, my anger. i gave Him the things i can't forgive, and the things i feel i can't be forgiven for. i am trying to get closer to these ideas that i have professed as truth for half my life, yet had no connection to the implications of those truths.
today i was in the shower thinking about all the stuff in this world that can't be justified...there is so much of that...and i realized once more that we are promised nothing in this world except Him. He never told us we'd be free from pain, oppression, illness, sadness, injustice, criticism, confusion, tyranny, lusts, wants, needs, desires, corruption in this world... but that we would not be alone in the midst of it, and that we would be free of all of it in the next life. that's what He meant when He said His kingdom is not of this world. Thank GOD it is not of this world. thank GOD there is something better to look forward to!
He gives us small previews of that kingdom in the beauties that He shares: the gift of nature, a child's laughter, the closeness of a friend, the release of tears, the healing of a wound, the intimacy of great art and word...all these things which seem so fragile and temporary and have even been judged as useless frivolity by some...these are the fine delicate windows through which we can look and see (in small glimpses) who God is. while we are waiting to be with Him.
i know many who would take what i've just written and tear it to pieces. They would despise and ridicule me for it. that's something i can count on in this world, even as i cherish and value life. i am really learning these days, that, for now, you just can't have one without the other. God, grant me the serenity...