I Shouldn't Read Facebook

Why do I do things that I know will upset me?  Why do I read the comments of anything on facebook?

Why oh why.

I know I partly do it because 1) I want to know what people are thinking. 2) It is a safe thing to get mad at.

But it is no longer safe.

I am letting it get to me in an unhealthy way.  It is starting to make me question who I am and what I believe.  Partly because I have not spent enough time doing the work to make my own faith structure strong enough, at least not recently. So I get really disheartened and angry and just want to throw in the towel.  Don't call me a Christian, I'm not one of those people.

But I am a Christian.

I do believe that Jesus is more than a nice guy. I do believe there is salvation through Christ.  Really, I do.

So maybe I should be reclaiming instead of hiding.

And I do know when I do talk about what I believe with someone and how it affects my life, it does matter and it does start to change perspective.

Sometimes it can be hard to be either the only liberal in the room of Christians or the only Christian in the room of liberals.

But let's get real, I am so lucky because I live in a place that this doesn't happen all that much.  I have lots of pretty rad liberal Christian friends.  Who are some of the most thoughtful, intelligent people I know.

So really what I need to do is have lunch with some friends, read the Bible or some good theology books and stay away from comment sections for a while.

Thanks, blog for helping work that out.  :)

Life After Death

I have no idea if there is life after death.  Sometimes I want to say yes, but other times that just seems like wishful thinking. I wonder if my true hang up is that the concept of infinity freaks me out.  When I think about what infinity is it makes me uneasy and uncertain and blows my mind in sometimes an uncomfortable way and sometimes in an awe inspiring way.

The awe moments come when I'm on the "this afterlife thing makes no sense but I will embrace it because surely my little brain can't comprehend it all" moments.

As interesting as that all is, I'm not really thinking about that kind of life after death tonight. I'm thinking about regular boring life and exciting life and hard life and well, life after someone dies.

Life after death.

We keep living.

I had to look up how long it had been since two friends died.  Eight years.  Eight years of me living, of the community we belong to still gathering.  Eight years of missed conversations.

Since it has been eight years it seems like something I shouldn't think about very much.  And I don't. But I do, and I still hurt.  Not in the raw way anymore.  Just in the scabby way.  Just in the way that I wish instead of my little girl having Dinah as a middle name she would be able to play with Dinah's little one, that never existed, but may have if there was time.

There is life after death.

And a scar.