Melancholy Faith???

It's been quite a while. What is up with me? What is up/down in me? The last couple of weeks, maybe a little less, I have just been in a stupid state of mind. I have been very introverted. I have been extremely, did I say EXTREMELY, moody. I have been sad. I have been pensive. I have been deep. Of course, I have acted shallow. As I fight my way back to a more user friendly, updated and improved being, words travel across the confines of my partially functioning brain. The word melancholy sits in my mind. So that's it? Often when I am driving, my conversations with God overcome the stereo and the traffic. (Good thing I am in His hands and that HE is the distraction instead of other things) My faith has become melancholy faith. It is there, but it is in a saddened, depressed refrain. How, Why is it so easy to slip into melancholy faith? I will try to decipher some of it as words form from somewhere inside. I am encouraged that in the last year we learned that Mother Teresa had moments of melancholy. I have not taken the opportunity to learn more, I just remember it being on the news that she had moments of darkness, extreme sadness, disappointments, poor self worth and constant questioning of her life experience. We start a new Bible study tonight at Mt Horeb. We will be doing Beth Moore's A Woman's Heart.......God's Dwelling Place. She asks that we make the following prayer a constant plea, especially over the ten weeks of fellowship. "Lord, open my mind that I might have understanding." I often think this has been a portion of my melancholy faith. I want understanding. I have always pursued it yet it eludes me much of the time. 2007 was an extremely rough year, physically, emotionally and spiritually. I guess it is common that as a year comes to a close we tend to relive and try to evaluate and pray for understanding. That is what I have been doing, basically finding myself in a trance as 2008 has turned the calendar page. Is my faith really still in place? Was it strong enough in 2007 or the years prior? Has it ever really been strong enough? How do we know? Lord, please give me understanding. I suppose I really need to ask Him to open my mind more. Take the cobwebs away. You know, you knock them down, throw them away, but in no time at all, there they come back again. I have had a lot of cobwebs overtaking my emotions this past year. Yet while driving this morning and praying for 'something' GOOD, Lord, please......... I flashed back to a little blonde haired girl on an early Sunday afternoon. I remember the little girl coming home from church, changing clothes and skipping outside while my mother likely was frying incredibly tasty chicken. (Often I would find myself sneaking inside the kitchen to 'snatch' a tiny morsel of fried chicken liver and try not to get caught in the act....) I would take off to my daddy's pond, yards away, yet visible from the kitchen door. I would run across the worn and well used dam into the sunshine speckled from the trees that stood guard nearby. I would marvel at the leaves, especially the star shaped gums, marvel at the shimmer of light across the rippling water, scurry to spy a turtle or a frog and tadpoles in the murky depths. The minnows would always make an appearance; all one had to do was pop a crumb of old bread at them. The little girl would stand there, then sit there, crouch there taking everything in to the greatest details. She would sing the hymns and congregational responses from the church services. Create in me a clean heart, Oh God..........Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise Him all creatures here below, praise Him above you Heavenly hosts, Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost...........Jesus loves the little children................. And then I've remembered and buried inside the darkness that sometimes was there with me. The darkness in many ways that came from childhood molestation that often happened there. That is all that needs saying for now. My praising and loving was taken advantage of. My faith and innocence was intruded upon. The cycle of melancholy beginning at an early age that I would not accept healing until approaching it this past year. It is a work in progress and I ask HIM for understanding. I ask for forgiveness for whatever faults I played in misguided affections. I ask for the returned freedom that the little girl be released to be who she was intended to be at that time.........happy, joyful, naive, and trusting in dreams. To be, and to remember a little girl with the huge praising and pure faith of a child.

What I desire is for that degree of first faith to return to me. I believe that unless we are truly a child, we lose objectivity in the miracle and trust in God's presence. It dulls with age and experiences, gets questioned by the influences of different surroundings and by other people around us. It is the faith that is born into us when He first thought of us; unique to each individual and just maybe it (that inborn, inherited faith of first breath) eludes us until the hour He calls us back to His open arms in the Heavenly realms.

And so the posting has gone long. But, it gives me new hope that in the first days of a brand new year, I can become 'new' again in a lot of ways if I accept and allow it to happen. The prayer I need from you is that I can look forward optimistically instead of lingering with hurt and guilt over things past. That a good harvest is coming after many longstanding trials for our family. That the time has come for sunshine to overtake shadows if I will let it light a new path to finding Annette, with blessings for all the Falls family, present and breathing.