Some days I really think I’m going crazy. And then I stop and think for a pair of moments and realize I no longer just think it, I am.

This journey I’m on is both exhilarating and exhausting. Soul-satisfying and soul sucking dry.  It’s like a walk in the park with a chocolate ice cream cone with a panther.  Who is hungry, ravenous really.  It’s as easy-as-pie and terrifying all at the same time.  It produces great trust and great fear.

I know God isn’t an oxymoron. I know it sounds like He is. Or like I am.  This journey is the absolute hardest thing I have ever attempted in my life to this moment.

Seventeen years ago today I was enormously fat. I mean. I’m 5’3″ and I weighed in at a whopping 175 pounds.   Of course in about 36 hours from right now, right this very second, I would be in labor with my first child.

I remember the agony, the pain. But I never wanted to quit. I didn’t want the pain to stop because I knew something good was coming and I wouldn’t be in torment forever. Soon my baby would be here and it would all be worth it.

Right now, my soul is contracting, and I’m in labor. Only I see no end in sight. No woman is pregnant forever. But this feels like it will go on forever. and ever. and ever. and ever.

I know it won’t end. In my heart I know that. I know it. But I don’t KNOW it. My head tells me it will never end, it’s best to just quit right now. Because it’s never getting better.

The dream I have? It will never happen. The mental pictures of completeness will never become reality. The deepest desire of my deepest heart, the deep-seated desire to passionately love Jesus with a passion that surpasses all other passions in my life, will never happen. He won’t give it to me.

I pray. Daily. Sometimes hourly, usually with greater frequency. But I doubt. I doubt He hears. I doubt His goodness. I doubt Him.

I. Freaking. Doubt. Him.

Him. The One who gave Himself for me so I could tell Him, “I doubt You. I doubt You love me. I doubt You. I doubt You want me. Everyone else in the world, except me.”

All the while I’m telling others, “He loves you so dearly!” “You are so dearly loved!” I’m telling others what my soul yearns to hear and doesn’t.

I’m not asking anyone to tell me. I’m asking my soul to believe it, even when (or even because) no one tells me. You see, if you just told me right now, “Girlfriend, you are so dearly loved!” I wouldn’t believe you. My mind would automatically reject the thought as untrue because “they’re only saying that because you put it on the blog. They don’t mean it.”

This is what happens when little unloved and unwanted abused girls grow up. They grow up believing they are always unloved and unwanted. They reject anyone who tries to tell them differently.  My soul so desperate to hear it and believe it, rejects what it needs most.

Which isn’t for man to tell it that it is loved. It is wanted.

No, what my soul needs most is simply Jesus.

Jesus. The One my soul craves, my life needs.

Like the helpless baby I gave birth to seventeen years ago, I cling to Him. Not because He’s helpless, but because I am.