hi, friends.

It feels like it has been a while.

I've been pretty out of it lately, unsettled. I'm trying to find my words again-- literally, but also as a metaphor for my life. I told Sharon the other day that I've lost myself and don't really like who I'm walking around in lately.

I have my good days in with the bad days, but I'm mostly just exhausted in general from having to explain myself (in varying degrees) and constantly confront what I thought I'd let go of. It doesn't seem right, really, with this whole theological concept of confession and forgiveness and then have to live with it more after the fact than before. I'm actually rather convinced that our churches and communities have a false pretense of having mastered such disciplines--in reality, they all (we all? myself included) have absolutely no idea how to respond to confession and forgiveness in sociological terms. I've been disappointed in more ways than one, brokenhearted in more ways than one-- for my own story and longings, for the Calvin community's, for the ecumenical Church.

But besides that, I wish I had more to say. I realized this the other day, this wanting more to talk about than just what's in front of me at present. Because there are a lot of things, but none of them tug my heart or draw me to them. I suddenly have an awkward social life. I spend a lot of time doing nothing. I sleep--a lot. I cry a lot. I miss people, I miss my dad, I miss last semester. I stay up late watching dumb movies or watch the latest on politics (probably the most constructive thing I do). Mostly I just want to let go and move on and just stop having to deal with this when I wanted it to be over months ago.

I feel claustrophobic inside of my own life. Restless and antsy and probably mildly depressed. Even now, when the last thing I want is to talk about "this," I can't help it--because there's nothing else. I'm haunted by it. I dread everything-- the next meeting, the next person to be told, the next requirement, the next way it negatively effects my friendships and relationships with others, it kills me again. I say it again: I felt freed and forgiven for barely 24 hours. But then everything else, everyone else, turned me into what I had done. I'm not really a person anymore, and that's probably why I don't like myself. I'm only what I'd done--and what's terrible, is that I actually confessed it, I was actually forgiven of it, but I still can't escape it. I've been turned into what I'd done. The only difference now is that everyone knows about it.

I probably shouldn't be saying this, but I do regret it. Telling anyone, I mean. It didn't help. Things could have been different, and it would have been a truly honestly beautiful thing if it had been different. I don't know that I would have the heart to encourage anyone else to confess in the way that I did. I don't think I have the strength to keep going. I know I don't have the strength to keep going. I'm a failure. I feel more terrible about myself than I did before.

I just want to forget everything.


Betsy Joy-is-spent.


PS. Except that it's not true, because I desperately want it to have meaning, and I love ministry and the church and people and want to do that with my life. I just don't know what that looks like or what it means anymore.