and so it goes...

I love when you'll be wrestling with something, trying to figure it all out... and then you get to read about someone else's journey down the very same road...

(Get ready for the longest quote ever... more of an excerpt)

“And then the sentiment occurred. I am certain it was the voices of God because it was accompanied by such a strong epiphany like a movement in a symphony or something. The sentiment was simple: Love your neighbor as yourself.

“And I though about that for a second and wondered why God would put that phrase so strongly in my mind. I thought about our neighbor Mark, who is tall and skinny and gay, and I wondered whether God was telling me that I was gay, which was odd because I had never felt gay, but then it hit me that God was not telling me I was gay. He was saying I would never talk to my neighbor the way I talked to myself, and that somehow I had come to believe it was wrong to kick other people around but it was okay to do it to myself. I was as if God put me in a plane and flown me over myself so I could see how I was connected, all the neighborhoods that were falling apart because I would not let myself receive love from myself, from others or from God. And I would receive love because I felt it was so wrong. It didn’t feel humble, and I knew I was supposed to be humble. But that was all crap, and it didn’t make any sense. If it is wrong for me to receive love, then it is also wrong for me to give it because by giving it I am causing somebody else to receive it, which I had presupposed was the wrong then to do. So I stopped. I mean that. I stopped hating myself. It no longer felt right. It wasn’t many or healthy, and I cut it out. That was about a year ago, and since then I have been relatively happy. I am not kidding. I don’t sit around and talk bad about myself anymore…

“And so I have come to understand that strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it. I think apart from the idea that I am a sinner and God forgives me, this is the greatest lesson I have ever learned. When you get it, it changes you. My friend Julie from Seattle told me that the main prayer she prayers for her husband is that he will be able to receive love. And this is the prayer I pray for all my friends because it is the key to happiness. God’s love will never change us if we don’t accept it.”

-Donald Miller
Blue Like Jazz