WRESTLING under STARS

I've been up late.  Can't sleep.

God has me wrestling with some things.  Well, maybe I'm wrestling with God.  But I'll come back to that...

Looked up and saw the stars.

Calming.

Makes me feel so small, yet here.

Underneath something so much bigger than I can fully comprehend.

a friend: I love the winter constellations. Seeing Orion’s Belt is a thing for me. Gives me peace somehow

me: They let me know that I can still dream

me: I didn’t dream for a long time. And then my dreams became so unrealistic. I’m learning that they can be part of life again. I didn’t have hope for a while.

hope.  stars.  something so much bigger than I can fully comprehend.

I don't get him.  God.

I'm stuck in Groundhog day.  I've been going through the same motions, getting the same results... over and over.  You realize that's the definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over again, yet expecting different results. 

I want to understand.  Life.  Love.  The secret to the best damn barbeque sauce...

I want to live the life I know he has for me.  

And most of the time recently, I'm doing that.  But then I look up to the stars and I feel alone again.  Even knowing that there are others looking up as well.  That God is there.  I still feel it.

Let's do a little recap - 

I've been blessed with over 400 days (445, not bragging - blessed).  This month will be 50 years on this rock.  I've seen my life grow, prosper, spiral out of control and then be rescued by the presence that has always comforted me.  Then repeat it all again.

Yet the one thing I've craved, yearned for since a kid is still elusive.  Someone who gets me as I am, not the broken man I was or the wounded child when I first believed.  See, I believed in a power greater than me as soon as I was sullied.  I had nothing else to hold on to.  And he walked me through the dark I hid, the terrors in the night that only ceased being a nightly occurrence in the last year, and the storms that I brought on myself in retaliation for the pain I carried.

And he gave me the stars - to get lost in on cold winter nights; autumn nights when the temperatures are just perfect in the south - on hot, humid summer nights when a fresh breeze might be the only way to cool my sweat-drenched clothes.

"God is with us".  It's a phrase my Dad used this morning as I listened to him teach a class at his church.  I truly believe that.  

And I'm wrestling with him.  I don't hate him anymore.  There was a particular night a couple of years ago when I did.  When I was so angry that he kept getting in the way of me making my own decisions about life and death.  I hated that he let the man-child take my innocence; that I couldn't handle it for so many years.  I just don't always understand.

I don't understand. 

I pray.  I meditate - the best a man with intense ADHD can.  I try to do good.  I am a good man.

And when I lay down at night, I am alone.

He's heard me tonight.  I love everything he's given me.  But maybe I'm selfish.  I just want a little more.  

So I'm going to walk outside.  Look up - see the stars.

And wait.

~ Peace,

The Burtle