The Longest Entry Of Them All

Yeah, this is a long one. And there’s profanity! And most people won’t make it to the end. So if you don’t, here’s the scoop. I’m taking a break from blogging until August 1st. Read on if you wanna know why.

My church’s retreat was this weekend, and once again, I’ve come out the other side in a dark dark mood. People go to God sanctioned events, like here, here , and here, and come back sobbing because they’ve seen the beauty of God at work in their life and they’re so humbled with gratitude, they’ve seen God, they’ve been touched by God, God spoke to them and told them what the next year of their life’s gonna be, and it’s so wonderfully clear, they’re so gosh happy glad, they can’t help but cry happy tears of joy joy joy.

And then there’s me.

It wasn’t like I started out the weekend anticipating that it would be awful. I was looking forward to being out of L.A., I was looking forward to going to El Capitan Canyon, again, I think it’s pretty there, and I embraced wholeheartedly Pastor Bernard’s opening Friday night message about how we need to ask God to transform us, how we need to focus on “what does God desire for me in this retreat time,” Great, sign me up, I am SO there, why wouldn’t God come in with a Holy screwdriver and do some tinkering around with my life because there’s more than a few bolts loose, the pipes are leaking, and I’m up to my ankles in brackish waters of uncertainty, doubt, self-hatred. I was fine last week, I’m not fine now, it’s how it goes in Amyland, nothing is stable around here. Or it’s PMS. One of the two.

So. Some brief snapshots of the weekend.

Saturday, 7:15am. I’m on El Capitan’s beach, walking, talking, listening, and waiting on God. I like walking on beaches, and though the waves are puny, and June Gloom is squatting on the skies, I’m okay with it all. I thank God for everything that’s keeping me afloat currently: (crappy temp job that pays the bills, Ethel the car is working thanks to Wella, who still won’t send me an invoice, I got my intrepid band of battle scarred survivors out of Sequence Four of my zombie graphic novel) And then I tell God I’m scared and upset. I tell God that I don’t know what the plan is anymore, and that I would love some divine intervention or guidance, or if He doesn’t feel like being that explicit, the slightest hint of a sentence fragment would be cool too. You know, something along the lines of Zombies…okay! Or Experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by. Or Hot guy back at camp. I tell God to fix stuff. I revise that statement to sound loftier and more church-like, in case God didn’t get it the first time (I doubt that’s the case, but I wanna cover all my bases.) I invite you to come into my life and engage me in whole life transformation.

And I stop talking. I listen. I stand still, look at the ocean, let the waves occasionally drown my feet and cover them with a sheet of sand. I’m not moving until You say something.

I stay there for awhile, until the salt spray makes my ankles too itchy, and then I move, start walking back to the campsite. There’s your answer: pain and discomfort are what causes one to take action.

Which may be more profound than I realize.

Saturday 10:00am – Tulip, our chick pastor, is giving the morning talk, and I am annoyed. Annoyed because I adore Tulip, we’ve had many conversations about God stuff, she knows exactly where I’m coming from, she knows exactly that I don’t have a clue who God is or how He works in my life, she has tried to help me by giving me specific Bible verses to meditate on, which didn’t illuminate jackall for me, but at least I feel like I’m .002% more knowledgeable about the Bible than I was before.

And yet she is proclaiming such a tidal wave of platitudes from the front of the Longhouse meeting tent, that, if she had said these things to me at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf table while celebs like Eric Bana walked by (which has happened in the past), I would have shook the table, screeching “WHAT DOES THAT MEAN!? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN!? (ERIC BANA! YOU NEED A BETTER AGENT! BECAUSE YOU ARE TOO TALENTED AND TOO GOOD LOOKING TO STILL NOT BE A HOUSEHOLD NAME!)”

“God is good, righteous and holy!” Tulip is saying at the front of the Longhouse meeting tent, “We need to pursue goodness, righteousness, and holiness!”

And yet, Tulip does not indicate HOW we are to pursue those things. She doesn’t expound on what righteousness and holiness mean to the common person, or how we pursue it (I have a rudimentary understanding of what goodness means, which translates roughly to Be Nice To People, and I pursue it currently by not saying what I’m thinking when talking to them. Holiness could possibly mean no premarital sex, but I’m guessing there’s more to it than that.)

This is what bugged me about last year’s retreat, and unfortunately, it looks like this year is falling in line with it again: this retreat is about abstract concepts (righteousness), and grand ideas (Engage God), as opposed to specific implementations.

And I feel so out of step with this church. Nobody else appears to be having the problems that I do. Everyone else is singing “Beautiful One I Adore” and “Grace Like Rain” with gusto. During the rest of the day, I catch snatches here and there about how “Tulip’s sermon was so great this morning. We really need to pursue righteousness.” And here I am thinking…

What the fuck are these people talking about?

Saturday 3:42pm – 6:08pm – it’s free time and I’m taking a nap.

Saturday 7:57pm - We’re back in the Longhouse Mesa tent, and I’m sitting in the back row with Virginia, my buddy who’s friends with Tricia (Simon The Dog’s owner.) I’ve already wrestled with the thought of leaving the retreat and heading back to L.A., tossing my cabin key in a fit of fury at the feet of Tulip You make no sense to me, so I’m leaving! Take that, you Platitudinous Hussy!

But then I dismissed it because I understood it’s the action and mindset of a two year old (with an accelerated sense of driving capabilities.) The better thing, the more mature thing, the possibly more righteous thing would be to stick it out. From a strictly secular standpoint, you know the second you leave an event is when the really good stuff comes out, like when you leave a party because it’s boring, and two seconds later, the Coolest Dude On The Planet shows up with a case of Corona and a DVD of outtakes of a misbegotten Anna Nicole Smith movie. So I need to stay and make sure no good stuff happens. Heh.

Pastor Bernard is doing the talk, and really, all I get is something along the lines of “Question: God, what can I do to be more loved by you? Answer, nothing. You can’t earn God’s love. You’re never so good that you deserve God’s love, or so bad that you’ll never receive it.”

I’m reminded of a passage in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray Love. I hate quoting something that’s so ingrained in America’s consciousness that it’s been featured on Ophra’s book club, but there’s obviously something in the material that strike a chord within us all, and that needs to be honored, and not grudgingly so, so here I go:

Paraphrasing a bit, Elizabeth Gilbert is talking about writing a note to herself when she was bawling on her bathroom floor after a messy divorce. She wrote this particular message in her journal as though she was someone else, “a now familiar presence offering me all the certainties I have always wished another person would say to me when I was troubled. This is what I find myself writing to myself on the page:

I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long. I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it – I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.”

Elizabeth Gilbert basically is alluding to the fact that it’s God talking to her. And my first thought after reading this passage was that’s nice. I can understand why it worked for her. My second thought was Why doesn’t God talk that way to me? I’m lucky if I get a sentence out of Him, and I haven’t gotten one since last year. My third thought is I don’t want love, I want help.

Because seriously, if the issue is Love versus Help, I’m taking Help. How nice, God, you’re telling Elizabeth Gilbert and the rest of us that read her book that you love us. You love us no matter what we do, whether we take anti-depression medication, whether we don’t take anti-depression medication, whether we cry, whether we do things that You probably don’t approve of (sex, drugs, rock n’ roll, double cheeseburgers from McDonald’s), You love us, You love us, You love us. Great. Thanks.

But could you HELP ME.

Because, and this is bad I know, I know, but God’s love, and the knowledge of God’s love, that’s a given. I was born and raised in the church, I know there’s a God, and I know He knows that I’m around. I know that He loves me. I NEED HELP MORE THAN LOVE!

I need help more than love.

I read the passage from Elizabeth Gilbert, and I visualize God there on the floor with Elizabeth, consoling her, maybe giving her a lovely shoulder rub as she scrawls in her journal. I don’t want that.

I want God to pick me up, to carry me away from this computer, I know, I know, I understand I understand. I’m here, I’ll take care of everything. I want Him to call the temp agency and to say, “Sorry, Amy’s not available for the next month or so,” and then bless me with the money to pay the bills for the next month without fear or worry. I want Him to drive me to some house on the beach that He’s found, where’s there’s beautiful sunsets and a tricked out computer and free wireless and a never ending fridge of shrimp, pizza, baby carrots, olives, egg whites, tortillas, chips and salsa, chocolate, and booze, in some bedroom where I wake up and look at the ocean every morning, in some lovely beachfront town where I bike in every week or so and flirt with the grocery store clerk, the mailbox guy, the groundskeeper, or the very industrious acquaintance from L.A. who has figured out where I am because he missed me, he MISSED me, dammit, and he tracked me down because he wanted to make sure I was okay, and he heard I was hanging out in a sweet crib with free wireless and he drove all this way, he might as well crash for the night, no, wait God’s supposed to be in charge, and I’m positive he wouldn’t want THAT, but if He was in charge, then he would arrange circumstances to where I wouldn’t want that, it’d just be me, the computer, the beach, the sunset, the never ending fridge and that would be enough, that would be ENOUGH, and I would write the grand epic that God has always wanted me to write, and maybe it has zombies, maybe it doesn’t, but I would feel secure that what I’m writing is EXACTLY what he wants me to write, because He arranged the circumstances in exactly this way so that I could write it.

I want help. I want someone else to make the decisions for awhile. It would be lovely if it was God. And yet when you don’t hear His voice, when you don’t feel His presence, what are you supposed to do?

And I’m back in the Longhouse Mesa tent, standing next to Virginia, listening to lovely Darla, who I bunked with last year, who is giving her testimony about the power of prayer, about how the past year has been really hard for her, how she went to church every week and ended up crying every week, and how she would seek out prayer partners that really helped her, because she would say, “Hey, would you hold my hand as we approach the throne of God together.”

And that sentence sounds sappy, and certainly not something that I could come up with, because I’m usually so focused on trying to connect with God that the majesty of who He is, is an afterthought. I don’t approach His throne so much as I bawl in my backyard, or shake in my bed, or cry over my laptop (maybe that’s why it’s running so slowly.)

But the simplicity of it. Nothing more than asking someone to hold your hand as you “approach the throne of God together.” Whatever that looks like for you, however you phrase it. It connects with me. And I start to cry.

I start to cry, and I can’t stop, and I am the master of the Silent Cry, where the tears slip down my cheeks without any audible AHWAH! AHWAH! AHWAH heaves from me.

I cannot stop the physical swiping of the tears, and that’s what Virginia notices. And she leans over and whispers in my ear, “Do you want to go somewhere and talk?” And the answer, regardless of what I want (because what I want is that very long paragraph above where God’s my real estate broker/IT guy/Chef/Matchmaker/Creative Guru), is yes, this is obviously what I need, not want. Yes, I need someone to hold my hand while I stumble and bitch and moan my way to God’s throne, okay, fine, let’s go.

So Virginia and I slip out of the Longhouse Mesa tent, and go sit by the fire while everyone else continues to sing and worship in heavenly bliss.

And I tell Virginia what’s going on, that I’m frustrated with the retreat, I’m frustrated with silence from God, I hate my life, “and not to freak you out, but I just don’t wanna do this anymore.”

Virginia listens. She says over and over again that it’s not my fault, it’s not my fault. Initially, I think she has me confused with the scene from Good Will Hunting where Robin Williams counsels a sobbing Matt Damon on the park bench. I am not Matt Damon. My parents are not the problem here, like they are with his character.

I’m telling Virginia my life sucks because God’s not talking to me, not telling me what the plan is, not giving me a lasting hint of glory to beat the black moods away, and Virginia says “You have to rest. You have to rest in God.”

Oh YAY! Another Platitude! Someone forgot to tell me that the theme of this retreat is Platitudes galore. YIPPEE!

“WHAT DOES THAT MEAN!?!?!” I say in the loudest whisper possible.

“It means you rest in Him.”

“WHAT DOES THAT MEAN!?!?!” I say in the second loudest whisper possible.

“It means you rest. How much sleep are you getting?”

“I took a three hour nap today!”

Honestly, I would love to sleep more. I love my sleep. If I had my way, I’d sleep for the next three months, wake up and hope that someone fixed my life for me while I was dreaming away (and yes, Sleeping Beauty is my favorite Disney movie ever.)

Virgina is saying it’s not my fault, I need to rest (whether it’s in God or not), she knows exactly how I feel and probably more people at this retreat know what I’m going through than that worshipping crowd in the Longhouse Mesa tent, but honestly, if that’s the truth, why isn’t that what the theme of this retreat is? If last year’s theme was Why We Believe and this year’s theme is Abundance, why isn’t there a theme of Struggle? Is it because the church has to project some kind of happy face of If You Just Get To Know God, Everything Is Happy Happy HAPPY! Because they don’t wanna scare off people? Because that’s not honest. That’s not real. That just blows.

Virginia wants to pray with me about it, so we do. Virginia does all the talking, I do all the crying. Virginia says in prayer, “How long, God? How long before we get answers?” Will it stick because Virginia’s doing the talking? Dunno. Hope so.

Sunday, 7:15am – I’m back at the beach! This time, I’m not walking. I have selected a very lovely rock, and I’m sitting on it, staring at the ocean (I take the phrase “Be still and know that I am God” very seriously.) The waves are still puny. The sky is still June Gloomy. Pastor Bernard mentioned last night during his talk that we should come to God just how we are, no matter where we are, and to be honest with God about where we are. Pastor Bernard does not know that I do that EVERY SINGLE DAY. Pastor Bernard does not know that I get no answer EVERY SINGLE DAY. For heaven’s sake, if you were just a camper that wandered into the wrong tent, you could listen to Pastor Bernard’s sermon, go off by yourself to talk to God, and get a better response than me. I think Pastor Bernard’s talk must be for every other person at this retreat but me. I think maybe I should skip this retreat next year. Either that, or sign up for KP duty, so the focus is not about connecting with God, but serving other people with vats of potato salad and bow tie pasta.

I talk to God again. I tell him I’m frustrated again. I tell him I need a plan again. I tell him I need a sign again. I’m breaking down in the middle of this talk, because it seems so futile. These thoughts are nothing new. I’ve been thinking these things, and praying these things for at least two years now. There is the briefest of reprieves every now and then, a fun night out here, a good writing session there, but overall, the majority of my days are me stumbling around going is THIS it? Is THIS it? Is THIS what I’m supposed to be doing with my life!? Assuming I understand and am following the whole Good/righteous/holy thing by default because my life is so boring that there is no opportunity for sin in it currently, is THIS WHAT YOU WANT ME TO DO?

And no response.

I see a few dolphins in the surf. Pastor Bernard would be overjoyed, and say THAT’S THE SIGN YOU NEED. God displaying Himself through nature and la la laaaaa. Those dolphins are a SIGN, dammit, and you’re too wrapped up in your gloom and doom to fully appreciate the DOLPHIN SIGN!

I see the dolphins. I note the dolphins are there. It’s not like they’re jumping up and down in choreographed dolphin dances like you see at Sea World. It’s more like you see their fins winking here and there. I attempt to take a picture of them. I have no other response to them.

Sunday, 9:36am – I ask Tulip over breakfast what exactly she means by us pursuing “goodness, righteousness, and holiness.” She predictably responds with, “What do you think righteousness means” (I’m no scholar, but I’ve been around enough pastoral people to know that they love to respond to questions by saying “What do you think (whatever I said that you take issue with) means?” It gives them a starting place to work from: this person is angry/sad/misinformed/didn’t get what I meant.)

I bat back with, “I don’t know, you’re the one that said it.”

Tulip then says the very simple answer that goodness/righteousness/holiness can be pursued/obtained by us reflecting Christ’s character. His love for us, and all that. She goes on to mention we should reflect the Fruits O’ the Spirit, which can be found in Galatians 5, verses 22-23:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Against those things there is no law.

I’m sticking with my original thought of Be Nice To People and calling it a day.

Sunday, 10:23am – We’re back in the Longhouse Mesa tent. I’m crying again. I’m nothing if not consistent, but this time my seat mate is Tricia, not Virginia (Virginia’s sitting with her cousin.) Tricia also notices the swiping of the eyes, and asks what’s going on. She’s asking this as Pastor Bernard is talking about how we all need to seek solitude and meditation as a way to engage God. Again, if you were wandering into the tent right now, it would look like Pastor Bernard has all the answers. Pastor Bernard does not know that I engage in solitude and meditation on a daily basis. Pastor Bernard does not know that it doesn’t work for me. Pastor Bernard does not know that I want to repeatedly slam his head into the tent pole in the middle of the Longhouse Mesa. But hey, maybe I’m the only one that God doesn’t reach through solitude and meditation. So I shall keep my violent tendencies in check.

I adore Tricia, who is perhaps the one person in this church that I don’t bother to lie to, because she is the only person I know who has experienced such catastrophic amounts of grief - events that neither you or I could bear without indulging in massive amounts of alcohol that would be enough to kill a small horse - that there is no use in being anything but bare bones honest with her, because whatever you’re going through can’t possibly measure with what she’s been through. Not that she lords it over you, oh hell no, she doesn’t. It’s just that she’s not only been through the depths of despair, she’s probably got them catalogued in her very own I Absolutely Believe In You, But Honestly, Fuck You God, Love Tricia Dewey Decimal System (totally my interpretation, hers is probably less offensive.)

Pastor Bernard is directing us to go off on our own little lonesomes to engage God in stuff before coming back to take Communion. So there’s the Golden Window of Opportunity for me and Tricia to strike out, find a bench outside and for me to reiterate my emotional puking of yesterday night to Virginia, except now it’s to Tricia. And nothing’s changed in between puking bouts, so I feel very foolish. Here, let me puke on YOU how I don’t feel God’s presence! Line ‘em up! Who’s next!? Who else wants a river o’ bile from ME!

I say the same things, with the added bonus of the Ms. Grumpy Spell-It-Out Pants that’s been kickball in my head: if you didn’t question, you’d be blessed. If you could just shrug off all your questions, you’d receive such a wonderful feeling of being loved, of understanding what God’s plan is. You’d experience His presence if you just stopped arguing about what does it mean, what does it mean.

Let’s just let that red rubber P.E. dodgeball sock you in the face a bunch of times.

You’re not experiencing God because you’re not doing it right. You’re not praying the right way, you’re not praying for the right things, you haven’t found the magic combination of words and phrases that would cause God to open the floodgates and razzle dazzle your life around in a Rubik’s Cube tornado of WOCHA WOCHA WOCHA WHOO PRESTO! BRAND NEW LIFE FOR YOU!

Yes, I know those thoughts aren’t real. Yes, I know they have no bearing in reality. I know they’re not what God thinks, or what God wants for me.

But where, oh where, is the RIGHT ANSWER!? If God is sitting right there next to me in the Longhouse Mesa tent, and He knows I’m thinking these things, why doesn’t He take over my head, for the briefest of moments, and send some kind of Almighty Text message?

I tell all of this to Tricia, who sits and lets me spew. And what she says is “I think you’re unfortunately still in a period of waiting.” Not exactly what I want to hear, but it makes sense, given everything that I’m not getting.

She also says the sanest thing I’ve heard all weekend, which is “Sometimes, it’s all you can do to stay in the ring.” Meaning that you take punch after punch after punch that Life dishes out, and it hurts, it blows, you lose teeth, but you don’t get out of the ring. According to Tricia, you stand before God and say “I really hate You right now, but I’m not leaving, so You’re gonna have to do something here, because I’m not going away, and I totally believe in You.”

So that brings us to here, right now.

This is me, standing before God, in front of all you cyber-witnesses. This is my prayer to Him, this is my conversation with Him. This is my attempt to engage with Him. Bear in mind that there’s nothing new in here that He hasn’t heard before. It’s the whole accountability thing that I’m hoping does the trick. The public humiliation that would come when it turns out I spew this prayer, and then tomorrow receive the call that somebody wants to buy my script. Grab the popcorn, feel free to take notes and feel superior (kidding.)

Dear God,

I don’t hate You. You haven’t taken away beloved friends or family. You haven’t yanked out material comforts such as clothes/housing/car/dayjob (or if You have, it’s been very briefly) from under me. You have provided me with what I need to exist up to this point, and I humbly thank You. Please don’t take this blatant opening statement as reason to suddenly strike down Mom/Dad/Agatha/Mr.Agatha/Baby Bug with something, because they all read this blog, and would totally hold me accountable should something happen in the next year, and I seriously cannot handle that kind of guilt.

I don’t hate You, because You have provided me with the means to get this far in life. Even if I don’t know what’s going on, You do, and when it comes to superficial things like Ethel the Car dying, or My Temp Job’s Ending, and I Don’t Know What’s Next, or My Temp Job Is So Awful I Want To Jam Pencils Through My Ears And Staple My Boss’s Lips Shut, You are always there to fix it.

And I seriously don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate all those things, because I do. Thank you for Darla's testimony about prayer, thank you for Virgina listening to me spew, thank you for Tricia, so much wiser than anyone else at that damn retreat. Thank you, thank you, thank you, amen.

Which is why I can’t help but feel like an ungrateful brat for what’s about to come. Every time I hear the lyric “Your grace is enough” it makes me feel like I shouldn’t ask for anything more, or to discuss anything else that’s going wrong with my life. Because your grace is supposed to be enough to answer any lingering questions, right? That’s what the song says, right?

But I don’t feel it.

And this is the thing, God. This is The Thing That’s Going On With Me. I don’t need to type it, because You already know about it, but the idea here is to be held accountable to a cyberaudience of friends, acquaintances, or random peeps who stumble onto this blog because they’re looking for Tyron Leitso or Jean-Jacques Feuchère or whatever else.

I absolutely know You exist. I absolutely know You’re sovereign over my life.

But I don’t feel Your presence. I don’t hear Your voice. I don’t know Your answers, in a way that’s personal to my life.

I have asked You to come into my life and change things. I have asked You to lead me down the path that You want me to go. I have asked You to give me a vision of what You want me to be doing with my life, with the abilities that You have given me.

I have gotten no response.

But I don’t hate You. Honestly. It’s more like I feel that, and I know how ridiculous this sounds, but I feel like You’ve either forgotten about me (not surprising, given the fact that there’s a bunch of other stuff wrong with the world), or have gotten bored with my repeated Fix This prayers because there’s something obvious that I’m not doing, some obvious red button I’m not pressing, some turn of phrase that you, the Almighty Board Operator, sees and then sighs in the corner, why doesn’t she press floor number 12? Floor number 12 is where all my blessings are! Why is she repeatedly jabbing floor number 6? There’s nothing there! Why doesn’t she GET that!?

God, people have told me that you’re not the Board Operator. People have told me that you’re not in the corner rolling your eyes, you’re not hovering in the rafters, pinging spitballs at people who do the Hands To Heaven thing when singing to You. People have told me that You are not anywhere else other than WITHIN ME.

But I don’t feel You.

Which is why, when I don’t feel you, I feel like I’m doing something wrong. People have told me that it’s not about the right combination of words, the right button to push, the right hoop to jump through, and I understand that intellectually, but I don’t know what else to do. I’m out of ideas. I’m out of blog entries, actually. I don’t know what the plan is, I don’t know how else to engage You, I’ve prayed, I’ve meditated, I’ve asked other people what You’re talking about in Scripture (because I’m not smart to understand it on my own), I’m not especially illuminated.

And I still don’t feel You.

I don’t know what else to do. So I sit here and the computer and cry and drink wine and water chasers. I know You can hear me. I don’t know why You don’t answer.

Please answer. Please answer. Please come into my life and change everything around. I don’t like the curtains, have at them. My mattress sucks, do something with that too. I’m partial to the color black, I hope that stays, as well as my Itunes soundtrack, but if You’ve got other, better ideas, have at it. (and this is assuming ahead of time that Your idea of better and my idea of better synch up, as opposed to me being stuck in the Ninth Circle of Hell of Endless Praise Songs That Have No Meaning For Me.)

Do something, God. It’s not like I have a plan that I’m relentlessly sticking to, despite all Your evidence to the contrary. I’M ASKING YOU FOR THE PLAN. Please understand that, please understand that.

Please talk to me. Please, please, please. I don’t hate You. I’m pissed, but not approaching hate. And I’m not leaving. I am in Your face, and I’m gonna continue to be in Your face, and I am going to whine and bitch and SCREAM AT YOU UNTIL YOU DO SOMETHING.

I’m not going away. And hey, God, I totally believe in you. But man, You really do suck right now. You suck not by talking, not by doing. But by NOT talking, and NOT doing. You’re like a fucking guy, God. Maybe if I never call her back, she won’t remember we used to go out. Nice.

I am not going away, God. I still believe in you, and I still love you, but You’re going to have to do something with me because I’m not leaving.

Love, Amy The Writer.

So, Gentle Readers that have made it this far, I think I need a break from blogging. I am the only blogger in my circle that I know of that posts on a regular basis, and while that means I get the Gold Star for Diligence, I think the proverbial tank is dry. I blew it all out on these 11 pages.

Secretly, I’m hoping that God takes the challenge and does some whacked out stuff that will demand instant blog documentation.

I’m not shutting the blog down completely, but I do need a break. Let’s give me the month of July, whatdya say. Check back for an update on August 1st. Unless God decides to do a miracle. Should we test Him? Should we? Should we?

Hmmmmmm.