something old, something new...

For those of you who follow this blog, you will notice the changes, and perhaps more poignantly, that this is the first post in a year and a half. The former as a result of the latter. After such a long break, with so many changes in my life, this blog needed to change form.

Before (blog wise and personally), I was all for a literal and somewhat stereotypical life of missions, being 'recklessly abandoned' and willing to give my life for God. This is not to say that that is no longer the case, but some things have changed.

The main reason for not writing in the last year and a half is because I honestly did not know how to say what I wanted to say without feeling like I am giving half-thoughts, assumptions and fleeting emotions. Those would not have done justice to what I was - and still am - going through.

At the start of 2012, my life took a quite abrupt flip which left me quite dishevelled and confused (see my previous posts for the step-by-step process leading up to this). To cut a very long story very short, I thought that I was finally giving God everything and trusting what I thought He had told me: to move to Denver, CO and join staff at the YWAM Denver base (become a full-time missionary). However, this did not happen, and I ended up in Cape Town, studying theology and community development at a tiny Christian College.

To put it bluntly, I went through a roller-coaster of negative emotions towards and surrounding God. Basically the full range of them, including distrust, anger, dismay, pain, betrayal and confusion. How could this God who I had finally decided to trust with my everything, let me down like this? It felt like I was that kid standing on the edge, with your Father telling to you jump and He would catch you... so I did. And what happened? I just kept falling... and fell deeper and deeper... I don't know where the ground was or what happened, but I fell and the absence of His catch was painfully evident to me.

The full extent of the betrayal I felt is so difficult to describe. I fell into a deep depression for months - something which I now recognise had been crouching behind me for many years, waiting its moment to consume me. Through therapy, medication and support of my wonderful boyfriend Jean-Pierre, I have made it through more or less. It is like losing someone close to you. You never really get over it; like you do losing a pair of shoes, but that pain becomes a part of you, and shapes you in some way or another. The fact that I struggle with depression is not something that I am proud of, but neither is it something I am ashamed of. It just is, and I am learning to live with that reality. While I do not let this define me, it is still somewhat a part of me. Like a scar on your body from an accident, this is the scar on my soul.

I am now in my second year of studying theology, although I have changed my major to be in psychology instead of community development. I have come to change my perspective on so many things, in particular what defines faith. Previously, I thought that asking questions and doubting were a sign of a lack of faith, but now I have come to see that doubt is a sign of a profound faith that simply won't take 'vague' for an answer, and so desperately wants to find the truth. This has been so true of my journey this past year. I have found myself asking so many questions of God, of faith, of the world, the church, religion, people, myself... It is overwhelming sometimes. However, I have changed my approach from one where mystery is the excuse for not knowing, to mystery being the invitation and the starting point from which we can discover.

I am going through a process of 'living the questions' - a very Cornerstonian phrase! But it describes it so beautifully. Most of the time, there are no clear-cut answers, and so what do you do with your unanswered questions? You live them. You live in the tension of mystery and knowledge, between faith and certainty, between life and death, between answers and oblivion.

My journey is one that appears to be surrounded by darkness and uncertainty, and yet I have discovered the most amazing little treasures hidden within the shrouds of darkness. While it has been a constant struggle, I would not change my experiences for 'easier' ones. Through the wrestling, I have become so much more in tune with who I am, and who God made me to be. And then I start to get glimpses of who He really is - beyond the theologies, church doctrines, myth, philosophy, lies, answers and questions... I get the tiniest hint of the vast mass of greatness that is beyond comprehension and our puny human minds... the One who says, 'I will be who I will be'... YHWH