...since I last posted a blog.  I'm getting really bad at this.  I remember a time when I blogged daily, or at least several times a week.  Now I post something once every few months.  Sad, I know.

Sometimes, I suppose, life just takes that turn.  Sometimes we have a lot to say and it's just spilling out of us, begging to be shared.  Other times we have a lot to say, but no way to say it.  And yet there are those times where everything is buried so deep within that there's no way to begin to express it - not even to yourself (much less others).

I've been sitting in a place of the latter for many months now.  Life charges on like a runaway train and I sit trying to hold on, trying to make some sense of the images and emotions and experiences that flash by so fast, too fast.  And sometimes that train collides with something on the track and I have to pick up the pieces, dust myself off, and hang on for the ride to begin again.

The last several months have been a journey of trusting in God when it seems like He's little more than a phantom deity - there one minute but inexplicably gone the next.  If I based my faith on feelings I'd be at best a schitzophrenic Christian, sometimes I wonder if I'm not.  It's a cycle of sin and repentance, pride and falling into humility, hiding behind a mask when all is broken and desperately wishing that someone could see the truth of what is there.

If I knew how to live this life I would.  If I wasn't choked by fear, haunted by anxiety, desperate to love and be loved, to know and be known, perhaps then I could be the woman I want to be.  If I wasn't perpetually disappointed by the face in the mirror, caught up in the futile race to be something, someone, out of a book or a movie - perfect and beautiful and always put together - maybe I could make something of myself.  If I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God's plan for my life was good, full of hope and beauty and peace and passion, maybe this trusting, this daily walking, this journey would actually lead somewhere.

And maybe that's why I haven't written in so long, because the thoughts and feelings churning deep within are frightening, because I'm afraid to trust that anyone else has ever felt this way, or that my thoughts are even worth sharing with the world in general, much less the friends I feel the need to inspire and impress.  The weight of writing can sometimes be too much to bear, so it's easier to avoid it, to lose myself in someone else's work, than to invest myself in my own.

And if you're still reading by now you will see why it's been 4 months since I last wrote.  All of the excuses about work and ministry and family and obligations aside, I don't write because I'm afraid I have nothing to say, or I have too much to say, and either way it's a risk to share.

No profound proverbs or neatly wrapped bows on this one.  Just thoughts, thoughts that have gone unshared for a long time.