It's kind of funny how certain small things will impact your life in such a profound way. For example, I am reading, for the fourth time I believe, the book A Cry for Mercy by Henri J.M. Nouwen. Henri Nouwen lived in a monastery for 17 months in 1979 and 1980. If anyone had ever told me that I would be able to relate to this guy, I would have told them that they were crazy. But the more I read this man's prayer journal, the more insight I gain from it. There is rarely a week that goes by when reading through this book where I won't pick out a sentence or day's journal that is the precise feelings and issues that I am struggling with. It has been both a comfort and encouragement to me.
April 5: "I keep projecting my present condition onto the future...But who am I to know what life will be like for me tomorrow, next week, next year, or ten years from now? Even more, who am I to know who you (God) will be for me in the year ahead?"
May 10: "Dear Lord, in the midst of much inner turmoil and restlessness, there is a consoling thought: maybe you are working in me in a way I cannot yet feel, experience or understand."
June 29: "You, O Lord, did not choose the lukewarm, the neutral, or the middle-of-the-road type...Let me have the courage to live fully even when it is risky, vibrantly even when it leads to pain, and spontaneously even when it leads to mistakes. But let me live always for you, so that I can be molded by you into an instrument of your word."
July 7: "Dear Lord, today I thought of the words of Vincent van Gogh: 'It is true there is an ebb and flow, but the sea remains the sea.' You are the sea. Although I experience many ups and downs in my emotions and often feel great shifts and changes in my inner life, you remain the same...My only real temptation is to doubt in your love, to think of myself as beyond the reach of your love, to remove myself from the healing radiance of your love. To do these things is to move into the darkness of despair. O Lord, sea of love and goodness, let me not fear too much the storms and winds of my daily life, and let me know that there is ebb and flow but that the sea remains the sea. Amen."