Heavenly Father

Blessed wonderful church this morning. I love church and I love Jesus.
This is where I get my solace. When I am in despair it can be very
difficult for me to connect with God but when I get to church, the
gathering of the saints, the focused worship seems to help me overcome
those walls that are set up by my own emotional dysfunctions and they
get blasted away by the collective Holy Spirit and the power of the
sacrament of communion and so much of the dysfunction is shattered. I
am still hurting, weak, somewhat despondent. I am just as fragile as I
was several days ago… the difference is that I am very aware of Jesus
as my solace now whereas Wednesday through today I could only pray for
His comfort. The nice thing about the Lutheran denomination is that it
is very filled with repetition so that when you don’t FEEL the reality
of Jesus, you still recognize that He is real and He is there and that
held me until today when my feelings could catch up a bit with my
intellect. Still, I feel like I’m on a precipice and could easily
plunge into depression and despair again. Nevertheless, I would still
KNOW that Jesus is there somewhere, even if I can’t see Him, hear Him
or feel Him. That knowledge is security even if it does not make one
necessarily the most chipper person when feeling down.

Somebody mentioned this scripture:
2Corinthians 12:8-10 8Three
times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9But he said to
me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in
weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my
weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10That is why, for
Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in
persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

I had forgotten all about it and it was so good to hear those
familiar words again because I found them so applicable. Picking on
myself for being so weak yet knowing enough to have turned to God these
last few very tough days, I, this morning, realized that my turning to
Jesus was actually a strength and although I felt crumpled emotionally,
in my weakness, Christ’s power might rest in me and that instead of
grieving about how I feel, perhaps this is a good opportunity to turn
myself, again, over to the Lord and see how He works it all out. I am
constantly feeling as if I am less of a person if I don’t remain strong
and I end up feeling so ashamed when I collapse. Instead I need to let
myself collapse a bit, but not make a catastrophe of it but give it to
God. So what if I came out of therapy feeling destroyed? I guess I
needed to take all those shattered pieces and put them into God’s
hands. After all, He IS the ultimate father, isn’t He? When I write
about this wonderful fictitious “Dad” of mine, I think about Jesus as
well as the other male examples that have poured into this person. For
an earthly dad, however, I need to paint the person as flawed and real,
that’s why my “Muffet” dad doesn’t reflect a lot of Jesus. But Jesus is
the father I want to end up with. I want God as my final “Daddy.” I
know that in the end that piece of me that is empty and unfulfilled
will be completed. It’s just hard now while I wait. I think that’s why
He gave me this book and my imagination.