spring

Not sure where to start or what to write. I feel filled up with thankfulness and gratitude for life and for the mercy and compassion I have been shown by others.

I know what I write here must come across as gloomy oftentimes. I am not exactly sure who is reading my blog at this point-- though I was recently surprised to find out that 20 people are subscribed through RSS feed (thanks to feedburner)! I was pretty convinced only one or two people were reading here anymore, so it was pretty neat to find out otherwise!

Anyway I just wanted to write that I am fine. I am more than fine actually. It sounds foreign and weird to say these next words, and I don't say them lightly, but I really know that God has been working in my life in a very powerful way. More and more I am having experiences that strengthen my faith and give me understanding about God's love and grace.

So um, all of that sounds nice, you may be thinking, but what the hell exactly does it mean? I used to hate when people would say stuff like that because it didn't make any sense. It sounded jargony. It sounded untrue. It sounded like something OTHER than my experience of God. So what do I mean?

Things like....going to church to volunteer, seeing someone else volunteering and starting to feel like I didn't need to come to church... and then having a person in need walk in the door a minute later and being able to help them... and realizing if that other person hadn't been there I wouldn't have been able to leave the church with the person who needed help. Things like talking to strangers and people in deep pain and being able to just be there, to just be comforting. I realize that because of my own pain, I can understand and help others.

Today in church the sermon was about compassion. As I was listening to it I realized that I am in a kind of reciprocal agreement with God. Maybe this doesn't make sense. What I mean is that I feel people have shown me mercy and compassion and have helped me, very often in the name of their faith, and in the name of God, and I feel like because of that, I am bound to do the same for others as an expression of my own faith. "Bound" is a weird term. It implies an obligation, and hmm I guess maybe I am "obligated"!

But i don't like that. I don't like the word "obligation". My faith is not an "obligation". Maybe its the same way a marriage works. You can pull out the piece of paper and talk about your commitments and obligations, but that's never what a good marriage is.

Lately I have realized that I am motivated by God's love and mercy in my own life.

That still sounds like a lot of jargon I guess, but its a start.