To feel again

I often say that I expected to feel closer to God after Liam was born, but instead I feel farther away than ever. I did everything I could to numb myself - my mind, my body, my heart - after he was born because feeling was just so hard to do. I was so tired, so I numbed myself to the feeling and it went on from there. Now, I feel like I'm walking in a haze most of the time, and it catches up with me occassionally. It's been a hard week or so, and I'm realizing that I'm missing some things that I (and my family) really need.

We say our prayers every night with Liam. We talk to him about God. We go to church and we sing Jesus songs. He knows who God is and who Jesus is. The trouble is, God has changed so much for me (or I've changed so much) in the past two years that I haven't been able to connect with him in a long time. I haven't been able to push through this fog to see him on the other side.

I used to be very spiritual and very quietly faithful, but that was when I had a lot of time to devote to it, and was surrounded by other faithful people if I wanted to be. A lot of those people were too radical for me, or too something for me. I was turned off to the "contemporary Christian" scene because of how exclusive it seemed and how elitist many of its members appeared to me. I want real faith and real life, and I have been struggling to find it in the past few years. I refused to read some of the latest books by well-known Christian women because I didn't want to be labeled as "one of them" - someone sucked into the whole popular Christian circle.

I'm realizing that there is a balance somewhere, and that I need to break down some of the walls and look past some of the stereotypes to see what's really there. I've taken on my own elitist attitude towards much of it, and lost a lot of the substance in the process. I decided to read a book by Beth Moore (the uber-Christian-woman author) to see what she had to say. And I LIKED IT. I like it a lot. The book is called Feathers From My Nest and it's her reflections on being a mother and raising a family. She has so many good things to say, and she seems to be genuinely humble despite her fame, fortune and Living Proof Ministries empire.

So, I took the plunge. And I'm finding out that it feels so good to be opening that spiritual door again. I want Liam to see my faith in action, and to know that I live my life with love because of my faith. We are going to the Christian bookstore tonight (a place I've avoided for too long) to get a family devotional. We'll start reading it every night...just like my mom used to do.