On the Road to Gethsemane...

 Jo Coudert writes Of all the people you will know in a lifetime, you are the only one you will never leave nor lose...

It's a good thing to pursue something. But it's a terrible thing to pursue what you think is the right thing when it turns out it's not. Worse still, it's awful looking for something you think exists but doesn't. Talk about chasing the wind.

I've always said on the road to Gethsemane I lost my way....And for the last few years, I've been trying to find that way back. Or so I thought. I felt what i'd lost was my relationship with God, I missed how it used to be. I wanted to get back to there. What is there? To praying, to reading my bible, to meditating. But over the last few years I've done that. Even after I felt disconnected, I went through the motions based on something I heard on Christian radio. And I've been doing that. I started last year with the pursuit of God and I felt that got me even closer. I've been praying, not like I used to, but almost like I used to. But still, I didn't feel I was there yet. Sometime this year after doing the second group studies, I felt I was almost there, if not a different and better height than I used to be.

So what has this got to with the quote at the beggining? Here's what I discovered lately:  On the road to Gethsemane it wasn't so much the way I lost. I lost something most people would argue you can't lose and I will argue it's possible to lose. I lost ME. Who I am and was. It hit me sometime after my last post. Now, I agree and disagree with Jo Coudert. I beleive a person can lose who they are, their identity, such that they become muppets, moving at the will of others. But I do agree that in this life, while people may desert me, I'll be there for me. Whether I'm there in my right mind or not, I'll still have myself.  I actually just started reading chapter one of her book and I haven't gotten past the first page.

It wasn't the way I had lost. It wasn't the praying and reading my bible and all the other stuff that made me what I was. David Seabury wrote, and I'll paraphrase since i can't find the book to quote verbatim , 'look to a time when you were happy, what were you doing then? Go back and do those very things.' Well, I was reading my bible, I was praying, and still....What I was missing was the fact that I wasn't me. What made me me was that I never compromised back then. I felt free to be me and I was me. I didn't fear the eyes of man.

What changed? I compromised! I've looked back at all my failures since college and I've realized they were due to the fact that I compromised myself. Every single one! But where did I change? Oh, I'm not going to go into all that. But what I came to see was that I wasn't thinking. I was doing what others told me to do. Now that is a grievious error. It's the self-neglect in it's worst form!

So on the road to Gethsemane, I lost me.  How is that possible? Hmm...