Coming Back to Myself...

There are certain things that always make me feel like I'm reuniting parts of myself. Scents, sounds, etc....

Scents: Patchouli and Lavender (mixed too), the smell of White Linen or Estee Lauder's Beautiful. The smell of a flooded river mixed with grass.

Sounds: Any kind of Baroque Music.

Authors: T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound

Art: Cassatt or pretty much anything in the Western Wing of the Indiana University Art Museum.

These things are usually influences that have made me much of what I am. My comfort time sometimes is Bach cranked (Tocatta and Fugue to be exact) while curled up in a chair with The Complete Works of T.S. Eliot as I try to take apart either "The Wasteland" or "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". ("Do not do not ask what is it. Let us go and make our visit")

Soooo Mrs. Mannix, 11th Grade Honors English. For some reason.

Lately I've been seeing things in muted shades, which for me is odd. I'm vivid, creative and see things in unusual forms most of the time, but I've been trying to get my depression under control again and it's been rough.

But something else can bring me back to myself. Being flat on my face at an altar sobbing my heart out. As I had doubted that my prayers were going to be answered and then I look up and see the answer in front of me as two friends are praying at the altar with tears running down their cheeks.

All I could do was throw myself on to my face and sob as I just said "I'm sorry I doubted you God. I'm sorry I doubted."

So many times, we clutter our brains with our human thoughts and our knowledge of human failures that we limit what God can do with what WE can do.

I'm blessed. So blessed to serve an awesome God that will answer prayers. In spite of my very tiny amount of faith sometimes. He's still faithful to me.

"Though in my heart I have questioned, even failed to believe yet he's been faithful, faithful to me."

When I left Idaho Falls almost five years ago I left part of my heart here. A sliver of it with a friend that probably didn't realize it (and neither did I until later) and part of it in downtown IF. I feel as if I have picked my pieces up anda put them back together. As if I'm whole unbroken here except when I am broken before God.

So now the sight of mountains and the smell of sage and sitting on a chunk of basalt overlooking the river and the sight of so many things mean that I am home.

And that God is good. He ALWAYS answers prayer even when it looks impossible.