where do you turn when...?

SEEK. It’s what the bible tells us to do. Seek with all your heart. Seek and you will find. I think we focus too often on the “all your heart” and “you will find” parts. What about the seeking? What does it mean? How do we do it? What are we seeking for? I have been struggling with faith issues since the beginning of july… but they’re not just issues of growing through new territory in my faith. No, I was stronger before this summer than I had ever been. Ever. But then I was knocked off the track. So now, it’s not a matter of continuing to grow from where I was, but rather starting over. Starting at the beginning again. The basics. For instance, god loves me. He LOVES me. With a capacity of love that I cannot even begin to fathom. And nothing I can do or someone else can do to me or how far off the track I fall can change any aspect of this love. I’m beginning to learn that again. But in the past, anytime I struggled with something I knew that I could turn to god with my generic formula and everything would be just fine: read the bible and pray. No matter what was going on. That fixes things. Anyone can tell you. Problem? Stress? Anger? Insecurity? Read and pray. But not now, and I think that’s what scares me the most. I tried my typical formula, and nothing happened. It still hurt. A lot. And I still couldn’t stop thinking about it. And I still had trouble believing that god knew what he was doing. And that scared me- what do you do when your time-honored solution doesn’t work? When your spiritual medicine gives your pain no relief? I had nowhere else to turn when my same old same old reading and praying didn’t work. I guess that’s where seeking comes in. We are told over and over in the bible to seek BLAH BLAH BLAH. Seek and BLAH BLAH BLAH. And so we write sermons and have debates and encourage each other with the promises and warm fuzzy parts that precede and follow the seek part. But what we need to hear when we have nowhere else to turn is SEEK. God is there. That’s the promise. But he doesn’t promise to always make us feel warm and fuzzy and to find US and pick us up out of our problems. We need to seek him. With all our heart. With all our heart: SEEK. Not just by reading and praying but by taking those things to the next level and making it the primary motivation and goal of your life to seek god. In thoughts by yourself, in relations with others, in any type of work and school, in reading, in eating, in thinking… seek god. Let your life overflow with his influence. Then how can the problems remain stagnant? They have no choice but to change and mold when the creator of the universe is allowed free reign in your life.
Don’t think this means I have it all together. Don’t think my problems are magically gone. This is new for me. And it’s hard. But after four months of panicked frustration over not being able to find god and fix things the way I always had… it’s a start. And in the midst of it I still need to stop and remember that god loves me. And let him love me. And know that he is there, and no matter how far off the track I am pulled, he is still there. Waiting to be found when I seek him. With all my heart… seeking.