Where am I?

A friend asked me

"Hey you....what's with your blog?  When are you going to write again?  Dance puppet dance!"

Let me explain something here for you.

It is very hard for me to write.  To write a post usually takes me around 2 hours on average.  Yeah....I know....right?!  I can't not start writing then walk away & finish it later.  It's something I have to finish...or I end up lying awake at night thinking.

Trust me....for someone who can't turn off the voices...the last thing I need is to be thinking about a stupid blog when I should be drooling on my pillow! 

It's been alllllmost a year since the last post & a few groupies have asked me

Well?!  Where are you now with your beliefs?!  Tell ME!

So here is goes......

My name is Jen Jen

I was willing baptized at 19 years old into the church knowing full well I had no testimony or knew even half of the history of the church.

I am now 40.

21 year later, I still do not have the answers.

I also believe YOU don't have the answers.  You struggle in your own little hell, just like me. Maybe your struggles are with faith, sadness, guilt, lack of understanding, anger, depression  & exhaustion.  And just like me....

     You question,

     You avoid,

     You go on.

I go on. I stay in this church because I have to. I stay because I choose to stay.

I stay because I CHOOSE to believe in this magical, mysterious God.  I CHOOSE to believe in Jesus Christ.  I choose to drag my sorry butt out of bed each Sunday because I have children that need stability.   

Onward and Upward I like to say.  Most days...those words come out in a long sigh.  

Some days I tip toe forward, scared of losing my religion completely.  I force my feet to walk on hot coals, doing my best not to stand up & scream during a church lesson "This is pure donkey POO! I'm outa here! Peace out!"

Days like those....Days of Abandonment, the only thing that anchors me is my family & my husband that opens my cage that I am flinging myself against & allows me to roam like an angry, hungry tiger looking for anything to sink my teeth into.  I grab my religion in my beastly teeth & shake it violently back and forth like it was a helpless animal.  Days like that, I destroy my religion.  I tear into it's flesh & snap it's bones.  I shred it to pieces.  

I saunter away, tired but satisfied at destroying the thing that give me so much grief.

"Why the heck would you stay with a religion that grieves you, angers you & most of the time torks you off?!"

  Good question?  I will answer your question...with a question....cuz I'm deep like that yo!

Have you ever worked at something that annoyed you, stressed you & drove you out of your mind?

Job?

Marriage?

Child rearing?

Parenting your parents?

Exercising?

Crafting?

Schooling?

We all have had to do things to better ourselves.  Now when I was in school, I hated it.  Some days I was a jerk because of the stress.  But I knew I had to stick with it.  I knew it was somehow good for me to stretch my mind.  It was good to struggle. I knew enough to know, that if I dropped out, I wouldn't be any happier.  It might of made my life easier for a bit.  But then the dust would settle and all that would be left would be a  wasted opportunity...and new stress...and new anger...and a new struggle.

Sometimes we have to do hard, annoying, maddening things to better ourselves.  Sometime we don't even know if we will be actually better off if we do these things.  But we press forward with a hope that at the end, we will gather up all these difficult things into our glass jar of life and mix all the experiences up to form a beautiful kaleidoscope of colors.  

I used to fear that I would never gain a testimony of my religion.

Now....meh....so what?  All the years of stressing over this...and for what?  How has that made me better?  It hasn't.  It just made me angrier & more inpatient!

I used to have anger at my God.  I did everything right.  For years I willing did what I was told, read, prayed, worked & hoped. All these things and yet, God never saw fit to take away my doubt or fear that all this was a lie.  I felt like the kid that wasn't picked for the baseball team.  Watching everyone else be high five'd & welcomed into that little club while I sat there scratching my head agonizing over where I went wrong & how to fix it.

Now, I'm 40 and I can say...whatever.  I have accepted I will probably always question God & the heavens.  It's just who I am at the moment.  I will still do my best to stand strong for my family.  I will press forward, onward & upward....and one day hope to join that elusive team and get my high 5.

Until then

"Faith is not without worry or care, but faith is fear that has said a prayer"