spiritual health

i heard that a lot when i was growing up ... "how is your walk with Jesus, Krysta?" "what has God been telling you lately, sister (from my southern baptist pastor)."

there was a lot of talk about spiritual health. not a lot of listening ... but it was certainly a common topic of conversation in the circles i ran with back home. and i've recently reopened that conversation with myself because i am no longer only responsible for myself. i will have a family in nearly four months that deserves to be healthy ... whole ...

i know i've talked about this a lot, but i've come to quite a cross roads.

i've spent three years trying to do what i didn't do well back home ... love people. which, if i were honest, has not gone as well as hoped because to really love people ... i've found that i need to love God first.

and in keeping with the theme of being honest, i'm not sure i wanted to love God. at least, not in the past few years in the way i had been trained to. wow. trained to. that's actually how i feel about my relationship with God in retrospect. either way ... God and i kind-of kept our distance. i wanted Him in a way that didn't look anything like how He was presented back in the day and i've become a bit emaciated in the process.

in short. i've come to see that God is necessary. that just loving people isn't enough and, arguable, isn't entirely possible without God because well ... there are a lot of really intollerable people out there who make loving very difficult. (especially when you have a low threshold for tolerance ... i know, i know ... working on that)

and i've also noticed that people are hurting. they're making really distructive decisions out of confusion and hopelessness. recently i've felt the world around me has been reflecting this crumbling effect that has been occuring for quite some time in my own soul. and i'm feeling partially responsible for not getting over my fear of being a robotic, judgemental christian and reinventing what a relationship with God looks like - if only for the sake of the people i've been trying so hard to love.

i have a feeling that ... at the end of the day ... people won't deny me friendship with them if i happen to say something about believing in God when they are looking for something ... anything ... to cling to.

first plan of attack: try caring less about proving to the world that christians don't have to be what you think they are (it has proven to be slightly canabalistic)

second: get real with myself and stop depriving my soul of the very thing that it needs to survive.

third: really. just do what i know is right ... for me. then it may not come as a such a shock when i talk about wanting a life that i'm not actively pursuing.

here's to a more balanced ... less anorexic spiritual diet.