3 So Jesus told them this story: 4 “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders. 6 When he arrives, he will call together his friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!
Luke 15:3-7, NLT
it's also a truth i am constantly reminding myself, what i call a 'mind' belief, not always a part of my deeper conscious truth, my soul. i believe it more today than i did yesterday, i suppose, still in some conflict with my reactionary voice of insecurity.
i am reading a book called Women, Food and God, by Geneen Roth. while there are some glaring inconsistencies with the author's view of God, i find many of the core principles amazingly accurate about how we as women have villified our bodies and even ourselves, reaching for the ordinary to find any source of joy, distraction or deep self-loathing that can meet our momentary need. it is striking to me how something so ordinary and grotesque in its truth is so universally uniting.
i've been thinking a lot about the gift of pain. yes, a gift. pain or even discomfort in our lives is usually a great motivator for change. where there is no discomfort, there is much less impetus for change, for growth. when we get tired of the pain, we start looking for solutions.
i'm tired of the pain. i've been tired of the pain for a long time. as i look back on the last 10 years, i'm amazed by how many ways i've looked for overt means of numbing my senses and distraction in all forms. i can't remember how long its been that i don't have daily longings for some mechanism for taking a break from my mind and the condition of my circumstances, my mind, my pain.
you might say that i have slowly grown tired of the pain, and want a change of scenery. a change in default setting. so this blog is the beginning of another chapter of discovery, of searching for the truth and beauty of wanting more, of believing that it is there for me to find, and for knowing in my heart that i'm a lost sheep that matters.
