a deep ambivalence//the kindness of grace

What am I doing? Tearing myself.  My usual occupation at most times. | Charles Dickens

Some of us were ambivalent.  But we don't do ambivalence well in America.  

We do courage of our convictions.  We do might makes right.  

Ambivalence is French.  Certainty is American | Anna Quindlen

As for accomplishments, I did just what I had to do as things came along | Eleanor Roosevelt

Faith is a living, daring confidence in God's grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times. | Martin Luther King Jr.

i have been long absent from this blog and it disappoints me.  i had great ambitions for this little creative space of mine as the year began.  and now roughly six months in, i find myself wondering what has kept me from pouring out thoughts, feelings, learnings and life events from the last few months.

i think what has been happening is that as of late i am bit ambivalent about life.  and not just certain aspects of life, but rather much of it. 

ambivalence is not a place i like to exist in and yet it is literally where i am finding myself.  in theory, escape seems so easy.  like just decide to get out.  decide to feel a certain way. just do it.  change it.  but i cannot.  it doesn't work like that.  i don't work like that.  does any human work like that?

instead i am praying for a way out of it...a way of finding myself in a place that doesn't feel so ambiguous, oppressive and so opposite of what i wish i had and what i think i want. 

it's hard because there seem to be timetables on my ambivalence.  i must decide.  i must figure it all out.  i must have an answer.  and the funny thing about it is, for once these are not self-imposed timetables.  i am forced to demonstrate the courage of conviction.  i like what Quindlen said.  it is such an american thing to demonstrate courage and sureness and certainty.  but what do you do when you don't have it?  what do you do when you cannot give it and it is literally being demanded of you?

i want this, but i don't.

it is okay, but it actually isn't.

i am okay and i am not.

and it is in this ambivalence, in this unsureness,  in these great doubts, that perhaps i can more authentically experience the kindness of my Savior, the kindness of His grace upon grace, that i am so undeserving of, but is truly the only thing that is getting me through.

it is the kindness of His grace that is carrying me through the thick of a deep ambivalence.  and it is His grace that i trust will lead me to a sense of certainty, but until then i walk in faith.  a faith that i am staking my future and my life on.  as scary as that is, i suppose that might be just where He wants me.