hope

the avilas came over for dinner last night and travis asked me this:

'why dont you believe in the bible, like do you have list of reasons?'
(way to be intense trav... jay slash)

if you know me, you already know what happened after that...

a whirlwind of questions and thus an intense conversation that because we are parents ;) didn't get to get finished.

anyway during the conversation i said how all my life i've hoped in jesus and when that changed i didnt know where to put my hope. i went through a long time of feeling completely hopeless and terrified. i said that i felt like i was starting to get hope back in the things i've come to believe are true, but that i still feel hopeless a lot... and for some reason i felt really embarrassed that i didn't have something to put my hope in and feel sure of, i felt myself blush when i said i got hopeless. i felt like a sad lonely little girl telling a grown up that i had done something wrong.

all day my heart has ached and i've been on the verge of tears. today was a day that i was living inside my head, a very very loud place on days like this. i do think that i have a small amount of hope, my hope is that God is real and that he is good. that is all that i can believe i can put any hope in but it doesn't make me feel any safer than if i even let that go. then i started to think about if it matters if what you believe is true or not, i mean we can never know but is the point of believing something just that it gives you hope and therefore changes who you are? and should i just choose to believe what seems like the most likely possibility even if none of the religious ones seem very possible? can you just choose to believe what you want? or is belief something that happens to you? i believe that religion is a man made system that is just there for us, to make us feel safe, to feel ok, to feel like we have some purpose. which on one hand can seem foolish... to cling to something just to make yourself feel significant, but on the other hand does that really matter if thats the thing that makes you want to be good and to love?

i dont believe that jesus is God, i dont feel that i could make myself believe that he is, something would have to change in my heart... i dont feel like i need some proof... i just dont feel like i can make myself believe it. but today just made me want that security again. that feeling where you believe something so much you just follow it. it takes a lot for me to follow anything. if i dont find religion and the only answer i have for the rest of my life (that still is not a sure one) is that God is real and he is good, will that be enough to put my hope in to get me through? i feel like i have more hope in humanity than in deity, will that be enough? will i always feel unsafe?

if i could make myself believe in jesus does that mean i'd have to believe the bible? if i believed the bible how would i know what i believed about it? i dont want my life to revolve around a book that i dont even understand... that no one really understands.

i like who i am, i like that i question things and that i think about them for myself.. but sometimes i just want to have a brain that stops at one answer and believes it, whether its true or not, just so i could feel safe. so i could feel bigger, more important.

this is the hardest thing i've faced in my life... trying to understand who God is to me. i dont think i'll ever feel like i've arrived at the answer to that. i do love having hope in humanity, which i never had as a christian, because you are constantly taught not to.... letting go of that has made me see life, relationships, and people all so different than i did before.

i feel smaller than i have ever felt in my life, i feel unsafe and i feel embarrassed that i feel hopeless. i know i contradict myself constantly because i know i dont have any answers.

the only reason i think about this is to find answers, i want answers so i can have hope but i dont believe i can find answers here, only 'best possibilities' and i dont think i can settle for that. i just dont want to feel alone anymore. i think i've felt alone the past year because i dont know anyone who feels the way i do about God and the world, my whole life i had people surrounding me who believed the same thing and now i dont have one. my friends are amazing and i respect everything they believe, i love talking about this stuff but it gets lonely, it gets exhausting, sometimes you just want someone to relate to. this, above all else is what makes me want to move away. i dont know why i think i'll find people who relate to me somewhere else.. who knows. anyway that's not the point.

the point is hope, what is hope? who do we put our hope in? and will i find it again?


deep shit huh?