Say Something

        Have you ever had those moments where you find something someone else writes or says that literally reflects something you've been thinking or experiencing? As if they are speaking on behalf of you, without them ever knowing it?

This is what I'm talking about: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/yearwithoutgod/2014/04/12/giving-up/

For me, it has literally been the same song, months before he ever made his post. Just, for me, it is this cover version. (women always seem to do it better ;)

http://www.last.fm/music/Gale+Franklin/_/Say+Something+I'm+Giving+up+on+You


But the strange part for me, on an almost destiny-like level of creepiness, is that I heard of Ryan Bell and his blog just before this New Year. It was his blog, his brave decision to go public about his "Year Without God" that made me to start consciously thinking about how far I had drifted from 'the faith'. Ultimately, as New Years Day of 2014 came and went, I made a similar decision.

        Unlike Ryan, I didn't decide upon a set time. Why? The year of 2012 had been the year that I had dedicated myself to a journey to discover if the Holy Spirit was real, or if it was just a dead star.

We look upon the night sky and see countless lights of stars flickering back at us. And yet, as I would often stare up, feeling so small beneath the infinite dark curtain of the universe, an endless back drop of the limited stage of our lives, I would wonder how many of those stars were really alive. For though we see the burning trails of their light, we are seeing the light of the past. Potentially millions of years old. These stars could already all have the life snuffed out of them, and we would never know. When we stare upon the night sky, we stare upon yesterdays. Yet we do not see tomorrow (as we might hope), or even today.

At the end of 2012, as I left the city of Saint Louis, I felt that I had received my answer. The Spirit was Alive. But when I returned to Northridge, I was not the same. Maybe I didn't have it in me.

        I do not know what this means. I saw such great beauty in Christianity, and the potential for a God that can live and work through us, restoring a broken world. It was a beautiful vision. But it was an ideal. I want reality. But what is real?

When I made this decision in January of this year, I decided to do away with countdowns. The looming due dates of tomorrow. For I have always been a planner, penciling in my calendar and set my eyes on the future with grand hopes, but always intimidated by the overwhelming potential and terrified of the potential lack of my own.

Instead, now I have decided to live day by day. I don't know where I will be tomorrow, or who I will be. I don't know if years from now I will be a believer and follower of God, or an agnostic, or whatever label we can think of. I'm not making those decisions. I've decided simply to be okay with how I feel now and what I think now and what I want now.

        I am sure I am not the only one that can say that Ryan's decision (and his blog) has inspired others to be honest with themselves and others and to wrestle with these deep questions that haunt our souls.

Over the last several months, I have listened over and over to the song "Say Something", and in a way it has also been my 'break up' song. When you dedicate your entire life to a person, to an ideal, how do you ever truly walk away? That person, those ideals, will always be with you, like a tattoo, stained even deeper than the skin.

        I often find myself missing the 'relationship' I had with 'God'. I would beg God to say something, anything. Because I was giving up on him, but I didn't want to. I wanted him to fight for me. To prove why I shouldn't leave. There was something so beautiful about the concept of an intimate relationship with the Creator. My Abba. I often am filled with incredible sadness. And I want to go running back to him. To be told by an unseen comforting force that everything is going to be okay. That everything happens for a reason. But sometimes, no matter how good a person was for you, it is more harmful to go running back. Especially if it's just because you miss what they gave you. It is wiser, more mature to struggle with the void. This is how we grow. How we learn to stand on our own two feet. How we learn to truly wrestle with the darkness within us that holds us back from truly being ourselves.


Sometimes, you just have to walk away.

And sometimes, when you cry out into the night, nothing speaks back. But the echo of your own voice.



As much as I love these somber blog posts. Here's something to uplift all of our spirits (Trust me, it relates): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c

The profound, so-true words of my favorite comedian. Thank you. That is all.