Retreating

I am so tired.

I feel as if I am drifting away from who I am, somehow.  Or maybe all of the structures that I built are just fading into nothing, and who I really am is the only thing that is left.

But there is one thing that I do know.  I am so very tired of Christianity.

As all of this falls away, the cliche statements and ever-repeated lines, the fancy vocabulary and typical words of advice wear increasingly thin and unhelpful.  My mind is just too weak to even hold all of this within itself.  I can't do it anymore.

And suddenly I realize, I can let it all go, and the relief is almost overwhelming.

I can let it all go because what I believe is dependent on only one person.  Well, okay, two people.

The first one is myself.  I have chosen what I believe, and no one else can truly tell me how to believe or how to live.  Ultimately, I must choose whether I believe what they say is right.  And in so many ways, I want to let all of the doing go.  And I think I will.

Because it is finished.

Which leads me to who the other person is.  He's the one that's kept me alive and breathing and moving, even if it's merely a crawl.  He's the one who saved me.  He has quite a few names, actually.

The most well-known one is Jesus.

When I say I am tired, I mean that I simply cannot - and more than ever, simply refuse to - listen to the voices that speak these overused statements, these exhausting methods of "doing it right".  I am so very tired.  I can't do anything anymore.  I have to close my ears and open my heart, shut down my mind and let my soul simply exist within this place, and try to hear the voice of my rescuer once again.  It has grown so faint at times I fear that it was never there at all.

But all these "coincidences", these strings of events that are so very elaborate and beautiful, that have yielded so much joy...I cannot explain them in any other way.  Either I am inside of the most meaningful story of all, and someone is directing all of this, or life is madness that no man will ever understand, a ball of tangled string that will eventually unravel, meaningless.

I cannot accept that.

And so I must withdraw my heart from everything that would seek to speak all these conflicting "truths", everyone who seems to know what the world means, and I must remember who I am.  I must also remember who rescued me from the maddening empty and cold.

It may take some time, but if I listen any longer to those voices that demand that I listen, that tell me that I must do or not do, that I must believe or not believe, then I will surely collapse into my soul and succumb to insanity.  I can't handle it any longer.

My heart needs to bask in the Truth for some time before I am strong enough to recognize it out in the world again, and deny the lies that are mingled with it.  I must learn again the voice of my Father before I can deny the whispers of the Father of Lies.

Here's to regaining the truth.