#anchortime[z]

a weathered photograph of a weathered diner

Jessie and I were able to hang out a little bit this morning at The Anchor, and Jessie's letting me borrow a book called Developing Intimacy with God. It's an eight-week excursion through the prayer exercises of St. Ignatius. She's talked about it a lot, and I'm really stoked to get my hands on it. 

The book comes at a good time. As I've written on here many times before, I feel like I've lost my way. I don't know the right direction, and I don't know what to do. Confusion is my companion. I don't feel like I'm in a place where I know anything for certain, and my thoughts are often torn in multiple directions. At times my mind feels like a chaotic cesspool from which there's no relief. I'm tired of being confused, I'm tired of feeling lost, I'm tired of not knowing what to do or where to go from here. I wish there were road-maps for such things. As I wrestle with those things that lie heavy on my shoulders, the one question I keep coming back to is this: What is it that God desires of me? I may not know what I want, and I certainly don't presume to know what He wants, but I'd rather be where He wants me to be than running off my own cockeyed "common sense." I crave to know what He wants: I don't want to be out-of-step, and I don't want to get lost down rabbit holes pulling me away from where He wants me to be.

I feel like a lot of the things I'm dealing with stem from me not taking time after everything with Mandy went haywire to work through the fall-out; when Ashley came along, I was comfortable in my own skin and found someone I could relate to, and someone who could relate with me. We've forged a great friendship, and I'm thankful for what we have, but I wish I had taken more time to work through my issues. I wish I would've taken more time to just let the Wisconsinite go from my heart. Instead, with my heart still turned towards her, I stepped into a relationship. That wasn't the smartest thing to do, but that's just the way things went down. And now, in introspection, I can see that I haven't let go. I haven't released. I've moved on; we both have. But I still haven't let go. I see how my not letting go affects me in so many ways. Ashley seems to be at a point where she wants "more"; I fear she feels that she somehow isn't good enough for me, since I was so sure of my love for Mandy and my desire to be with her forever, but in seven months I haven't come to the point of being able to say "I love you" (in that particular way). I feel like the relationship is coming to a point where I'm expected to offer more and give more, but I don't feel ready at all to do that. For the relationship to move to a higher level, I need to be able to let her into my heart. Right now it feels like my heart has a "No Vacancy" sign flashing in the window. I have been tenacious in my determination to move beyond these issues, but there doesn't seem to be any headway. These issues stem from my own refusal (or inability?) to let go, and they're no fault of anyone's but my own. Moving on is one thing; letting go, that's quite another.

My prayers have been focused (and this isn't surprising) on my relationship with Ashley. She's fantastic, and I want this to work. I don't know if it will, but I know that I don't want to let her down. I don't want to leave her and the kids. I want to work through my issues and come to the point where I can love her the way I loved Mandy. She deserves that so damned much, and she believes that I am God's answer to her prayers, and I don't want to let her down. I believe that if this is where God wants me to be--if it is His desire for me to be for Ashley and her daughters what her ex-husband never was--then He will heal my heart so that I can love someone other than the Wisconsinite. I don't fall in love easily, and maybe I'm expecting too much. All this to say that during my prayers, which have been escalating in intensity, there's the deepening conviction that if I am to discern God's desires and to experience His guidance, I need to be in tune with the Spirit. And the truth of the matter is that while I may pray a lot about certain things, I haven't been taking the time to really just pursue God as He is. Prayer has become a sort of "tool" to manipulate God into healing me, and thus the prime content of prayer--that of bathing in God's presence, hearing His voice, being touched and changed by Him--is sidelined in favor of a more pragmatic approach to the whole thing. 

This is why I'm excited about this book: it's all about developing intimacy with God through prayer. Prayer isn't a complicated gimmick. It's simple, really. But sometimes you can be so dumb that you just need someone to take you by the hand and show you the ropes all over again (I'm talking about myself here). A growing conviction over the past weeks and months has been my need to really seek out God's will for me in this period of my life. It's a dangerous game, of course; even I have convoluted thoughts on the subject of God's will for anyone's life. But all that abstract thinking and theological dancing needs to be set aside for the experience of God's guidance. I long for His guidance and I need His guidance. I'm encouraged by the lyrics to King & Country's Shoulders:

when confusion's my companion

and despair holds me for ransom

I will feel no fear, I know that You are near

when I'm caught deep in the valley

with chaos for my company

I'll find my comfort here, 'cause I know that You are near

You're right here, pulling me through

You carry my weakness, my sickness, my brokenness

all on Your shoulders

You are my rest, my rescue

You mend what once was shattered

and You turn my tears to laughter

Your forgiveness is my fortress

oh Your mercy is relentless