Six: The White Room

Yesterday was a bad day.

It was one of those days that leaves you beaten and battered, wondering "How did I get here?" Yup. How did I get here? How did I get here? Sometimes when I sit with God, I ask him...and usually I don't hear anything.

So often, the entitled culture of our time thinks, "If I ask God a question, he should be able to give me an answer now!" I'm there. I admit that I'm a part of this selfish generation, focused on receiving immediate answers to my questions. God! If you want me to go there and do this, make a bird fall from the sky...or text me...or...something........please? Recently I've been getting stuck in my questions that relate to the past. I'll ask him if I lost everything I loved to learn about his love, or to gain insight, or to see how he's able to bless me years and years from now. But I just end up in this big, rotten mess with running mascara and puffy, red eyes because I don't hear God's booming voice saying..."Yes. That's right." I have this fear that when I'm 80 years old I'll look back and say that I missed out on this great chance at life because I just couldn't hear God. It's not that I'm not trying to listen, it's just not happening. My question is: How can you listen for something and actually hear it when you don't know what it's supposed to sound like in the first place?

I thought I had understood God's voice long, long ago...and I turned out to be wrong. Then I actually did hear God's voice through the Word, but it seems I've forgotten what it sounds like. I went through a hard time a little while ago and couldn't do a quiet time for close to two months, and in that time I forgot how God sounded. Now, I'm actually afraid every time I open my bible that I won't be able to know if what I hear and feel is God or my own ambition.

Yes, I've prayed about it. But even now, when I pray, I feel nothing. I've gotten to the point where I don't allow myself to feel anything at all, because of my fear that all the feelings I have are actually beasts of my own design. How sad is that? I cherish my ability to feel and empathize more than most things in my life and now I feel like I'm standing in a white room with no windows and one hidden door that's the only way out into a world of color, vibrancy, and the life for which I yearn.

Paralyzed by fear is a term I never thought would describe me at this juncture of my life. I'm a Senior in college, about to graduate and move on into a world of uncertainties. God is the only thing certain in my life but right now either he's become silent or I've become deaf.