March 6, 2005

• So many people recommended Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller that I went out and got that book, and a few others that have been suggested. Blue Like Jazz is awesome! Thank you to Nomi Pie and the others who told me about it.
  

  
  

  Please continue to recommend good books that move your spirits, because finally a Barnes and Noble bookstore has opened within a half an hour from our house, and now I am looking to add to my books to read pile. Any good suggestions are welcome!!!!

  
  

  Well, a few quotes from Blue Like Jazz that kind of touched me. Haven’t read far, so don’t panic.

  
  

  P. 4  Miller talks abot the few times he saw his father, and how his father had left his mother, so in talking about God, Miller says, “Today I wonder why it is God refers to Himself as ‘Father’ at all. This, to me, in light of the earthly representation of the role, seems a marketing mistake. Why would God want to call Himself Father when so many fathers abandon their children?
        As a  child, the title Father God offered an ambiguous haze with which to interact. I understood what a father did as well as I understood the task of a shephard. All the vocabulary about God seemed to come from ancient history, before video games, Palm Pilots, and the Internet.
       If you would have asked me, I suppose I would have told you there was a God, but I could not have formulated a specific definiton based on my personal experience. Perhaps it was because my Sunday school classes did much to help us memorize commandments and little to teach us who God was and how to relate to Him, or perhaps it was because they did and I wasn’t listening. Nevertheless, my impersonal God served me fine as I had no need of the real thing.”

  
  

  Heather’s comments: Oh can I relate to this. I could never relate to God as Father as a kid, because the father I had was an abusive, drunken, evil person who hurt me way more than anything and who did not love me. So father was someone to hide from, to run from, and to not draw attention to yourself from. Ask me a few years ago and I too would have said that it was a marketing mistake. I have changed now, but it has been a slow process. And God the father at one time was as puzzling as why Dorothy clicked her red shoes together to go home from the land of OZ. As a kid I would have stayed.

  
  

  A great book, A Shepherd Looks at the 23rd Psalm helped me to understand the role of shepherd, and my experience as a mom as well as my husband’s abilities as a father, as well as Pastor Don’s gentleness is showing me a bit more of what an earthly father/mother is like. I can’t say that I really could see myself coming boldly to God as a child, there is still much to be cleaned off from me, but I can say that the idea of Father God is becoming as tantilizing as a carrot on a stick. Drawing me closer to look. Kind of like when the apes reach out to touch the monolith in 2001 a Space Oddesy. I am sort of seeking, but ready to flee at the least bit of fright.

  
  

  Have you found that Sunday School and church has made it hard to learn how to relate to God? I think some do. Fortunately our church is not one of those, as the emphasis is on a personal relationship with God, not ritual, or tradition. Just Bible teaching and spending time in prayer and meditation is emphasized.

  
  

  I think that for me the notion of Bible study has grown to be so consuming. As I have read the Bible and see the depth in the well-chosen words, and the connections between the passages, it makes it much easier to see a God who is in control, who knows what is to happen, and has things all worked out in such a way to make the end right. God, who forgives our errors and gives second chances, and lets us help in this work is awesome. My only pet peeve, is that sometimes His timetable from the standpoint of eternity drags a lot in the midst of our lives. When I want things now, and find out that he will do it in his own time, and that could be years down the road, is a bit tough to stomach at times.

  
  

  Miller then talks about when he first began to sin, and on page five a tiny quote struck home, “I sinned only in bits at first—small lies, little inconsistencies to teachers about homework and that sort of thing. I learned the craft well, never looking my teacher in the eye, always speaking quickly, from the diaphragm, never feeble about the business of deception.”

  
  

  Heather’s notes: Oh do I remember small lies. As a child I learned to lie much earlier than Miller’s age of 10, I had to lie to survive. I had to smile and say things were ok when they weren’t , I had to put on a happy face and hide terror. I had to lie to save myself from beatings. Tonight, driving to pick my daughter up, I had a heart to heart talk with God. I was apologizing to Him about how I feel that I fail in worship, the trust of Him as a little child, and that I fall so short in my relationship with Him that I wonder why He even bothers with me. I talked with Him regarding the empty spot inside of the little child that was never fulfilled.

  
  

  When I was a child, teachers would write that I acted like a 52 year old adult on my report card (that was good for a beating) when it came home on a kindergarten reportcard. So I had to pretend to be a child.
  
  I asked God if maybe because I could never really come to Him as a child, because I was old beyond my years, if that was why He didn’t answer my prayers back then. And I have asked Him to try and help me somehow find that child-like part of myself, somehow I think that needs to be satisfied.

  
  

  There was a lot more, a lot of fodder to sort out, and I am looking forward to speaking with my pastor regarding this. But I often wonder if, because as a child, what was innocent was stolen at such an early year, if maybe it has polluted my relationship with God.

  
  

  Of course, then my thoughts went to the teachings I have been sorting through about how we limit God by our perception of what we think He can do or not do, and how we cannot put God in a box, so maybe He has a way of restoring these things in a way that I can’t even conceive of. Of course I sure hope if He is going to restore them that He does it more on my timetable than on His.

  
  

  Oh, how I struggle against the yoke.

  
  

  Well it was a bitter sweet conversations with God, punctuated with tears that terrify me, as for me tears represent danger. Guess it is good that I am honest to God in tears, but frankly I wish I were more in control of my emotions. Can we get too emotional for God?

  
  

  Sorry for the rambling, but then my talk was rambling to God. Hopefully he can sort the wheat from the chaff in my meandering conversation with Him.

  
  

  Well, again, thanks for the recommendation of this book. Think of me tomorrow as I freeze in the morning. I am the cookie chairperson for our Girl Scout council and the truck is delivering cookies tomorrow, and I get to spend about three hours outside counting boxes and distributing them to the different Girl Scout troops. So, if you don’t hear from me until later in the day, that is why. Praying it doesn’t snow or rain.

  
  

  Have a great night.

  
  

  Heather

  • 9:59 pm
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