God and I have a tumultuous relationship.

We’ve been that way for awhile. We’ve been back and forth and I’ve met with him in different spaces and places. I’ve yelled at God on dirt roads in Swazi and cried looking at so many different bodies of water.

I’ve struggled with not feeling enough. Not being able to hear God enough, not being holy enough, not giving or volunteering enough.

I’ve struggled in the church of feeling like too much. Too big. Taking of too much space. Using too many words.

They are things I’ve picked up along the way in all the churches I’ve worked at, the ones I’ve attended, in the ones I’ve sang at, in the places in between that became church spaces.

I haven’t been able to go to church in a lot of weeks because of theater and other life things and I can always feel it in my soul when it’s been awhile since I’ve sat in that space. I can feel when I haven’t given myself a few moments to be quiet- which I’m aware I should do on days other than Sunday but the way in which my life is able to pause on a Sunday morning even when I’m in the café or setting up Sunday school is something different.

It’s a different kind of holy moment for me.

And that’s the holy moment I can’t walk away from.

I don’t think in the last few years I’ve ever been angry at God persay. I’ve never thought the things around me were the fault of some man in the sky who looks down and tries to make my life more difficult.

I’m absolutely not someone who thinks that literally everything happens for a reason. I just believe you can use everything that happens FOR a reason.

And while I haven’t been angry at God or thought that I was just trapped in this game that kept lobbing grenades at me; I have desperately wanted to run away from anything that looked like God.

I realized that everything in my life felt like clutter; and all I wanted to do was shut all the doors so no one could see in. I’ve tried to move quickly because the things I felt happening were too big for me.

In every quiet moment I had, I was searching for something to fill it. I was trying to find noise or a job or a project to not take a moment.

So, today, when I decided to listen to some old worship music while I worked, this line was a billboard in front of me:

“If I open my hands will you fill them again?”

And in the moment hearing that lyric, I thought, why would you?

Because all I feel like I’ve done lately is fail.

I have felt like an awful friend, a not great daughter, I’ve been not doing all the things I need to at work, I’ve been showing up halfway.

Part of me is scared. Scared to be lonely, scared to open myself up again to places and things that remind me of parts of myself that felt too big.

Part of me still believes I am too much and not enough all in the same breath.

Part of me listens to the small voice that tells me to be silent.

And part of me doesn’t know what to do with my hands.

I wish I could say that I know where this is going.

That I am writing from the end of this part of my story and not the middle.

Hell, this might even be the beginning of a chapter.

And that’s where I’m at today.

That’s where my feet are.

With love,

Meg