Well ... I'm back

[tpc1977]

Tonight, if we get the time, my wife and I will be having a little chat. I want to set some boundaries. She's in this perky, little, happy-go-lucky, ain't-nothing-wrong, fine-with-the-world, mood. So, if I'm thinking clearly within a few days or weeks she should bottom out and tell me she doesn't know what she wants. If we're working on us then we need to work on us. We need to decide what it is we want from this and move forward.

For days now I've stepped back and treated her with a straight forwardness but with respect. She makes the phone calls. She comes to me. She pursues. I'm chilling the (blank) out and trying to right myself with myself. I'm trying to gain the strength I need to cope with whatever waits down the dark, cold path of reality.

She seems so nonchalant and carefree. To me it seems like she's under control and has it in her mind that no matter what I'm here working on us. If I'm doing it why does she have to bother. She can do whatever she pleases and I'll just puppy-dog around her with my tail wagging.

One of the dark matters here is, if she really is dealing with personal stuff that is not being addressed and I walk out just to get her attention I could clearly see her dropping so low that no one knows what she may do. She may sink deeper than ever and give up on everything - go back to drinking and taking pills. Her attitude would go back to where it was and hate herself and everyone around her. If that happened she would never work again and have to rely on someone else - if you know what I mean. The kids would suffer. Her family would too. And I would as well.

I feel like I need to hold her up, lead her even though she kicks and screams. But I have to put on this front. I have to be this stoic bag of bones. I have to give up on knowing anything that's going on behind the scenes.

This path is lonely. I have severed ties with God completely. Right now I'm doing everything on my own without help from anyone. No family. No friends. No God. The only good that has come from becoming agnostic or atheistic is that I don't have a weighty guilt on me that used to hold me back. Being pentecostal comes with a massive load of guilt, unworthiness, unrighteousness that keeps you from thinking anything good could happen. You pray, then make excuses as to why God told you, "No." You'd beg and ask for mercy only to continue hurting and telling yourself, "God's grace is sufficient." Constantly, your inner voice - or subconscious - would poke you with a sharp needle and tell you how unworthy you were for God to even hear your cries.

"Look at you. You don't tithe. You don't help others. All you do is think of your own problems. You don't go to church anymore. You aren't worthy of anything. You suck at being a Christian. You suck at being a husband. You suck at being a father. You're a lustful, selfish, self-centered, egotistical, worthless waste of a shell."

Endlessly I would pray for a feeling of worthiness. I would pray and ask God to tell me He loves me. And not just something lifeless like a quote from the bible or a stupid sign on a church billboard. Something personal. And it never came.

I came to a place where I thought, if my daughter ever came up to me suffering to know whether or not I loved her what would I do? I would gather her up in my arm and look her dead center in the eyes and tell her with the utmost honest loving voice I could muster. Why would I let my daughter suffer not knowing? I wouldn't. But God does. God makes you wonder. God makes you suffer. God steps away and acts lifeless, distant, and uncaring. As a God of infinite strength and understanding how could he not (as a personal God) tell you He loves you in the deepest most secure way?

It makes me wonder how many of his children took their own lives because of the emptiness they felt not knowing if God loved them. Is this the separation we hear about in the bible? Are we living it now? God has stepped away and we're really without his Spirit and love. He's testing us. Maybe this is Hell. We are all living without God's love. The chasm is boundless. We cannot reach God anymore. He's taken his people and we're what's left.

Sometimes my mind wanders to a place where it cannot understand - where it cannot find a purchase to hold. I'll think of such bleak loneliness that even I start to get sick on my stomach. Sometimes it's a place in which I try to understand the vastness of our universe, the insignificance of our existence in it, or the melding of timelessness and boundless space we float in.

There may be upwards of 500 billion galaxies in our universe. 500 BILLION!!!! Within each galaxy it's estimated that 10% of the stars contain a solar system. That means about 20 million could exist in each of the 500 billion galaxies. 20 million x 500 billion chances that there are other lifeforms. Directing my mind toward that makes me wonder if God is the God of all then He is the God of all we live in. If He is the one and only God then why is our one planet the only planet out of this unfathomable expanse that needed a savior? God's ONLY son. Only! Meaning, there was no other son to which God needed to put on a cross anywhere else in this cosmos for the sins of that world. And on that one speck of blue we've come to decide that only about 2.5 billion of us are going to heaven in this century. Now that's a pretty large number. But think of this. If we sliced the denominations down to the core beliefs then I would summarize only a handful of that number would go. How many people would actually profess Christ as their one true savior? A third? A third of the people on this one planet in 200 million x 500 billion solar systems are going to heaven because God decided to birth a savior from the womb of a virgin.

I wonder and question all this and try to place our mythologies in a cosmos that has no bounds and possibly no end to bearing life and no end to thoughts and discoveries. What makes our infinitesimal belief system the one true way? Then I just want to put a bullet in my head because my mind can't tap into all the possibilities that we're oh so wrong.