I wish I could explain what's been eating at me lately. I've spent so much time trying to get around it, either by brushing it under the rug like it's no big deal or by bustling around doing "good things" to cover it up, to make me feel like the incompleteness isn't there and like I've got all my ducks in a row.

But that's not quite true. I'm going to be baptized a week from Sunday and then the Sunday after that, I'll be accepted into the membership of the church I've been attending since I was six. I'm really excited to finally be at this point in my life, but I can't shake a nagging feeling that I'm doing it for the wrong reasons or that I don't really understand what this means between me and God. But it's not just a question of weather or not I'm ready to be taking this step, it's more a emptiness I feel in myself where I thought God was supposed to be... a hollowness in my religion that I thought was supposed to be vibrant and real and strong. That worries me in so many ways- I'm afraid of what this is doing to my testimony before my fellow Christians, my witness to unbeleivers, and ultimately to my own spiritual health.

Let me see if I can explain what I mean. I'm reading a book right now called Born Again. It's by Charles Colson, infamously known as President Nixon's "hatchet man" because he was willing to cut through the red tape and break rules in order to get things done in the White House. He was eventually charged with being involved in Watergate (a famous break-in to a Democratic safe, I think) and he ended up serving jail time for deliberately black mailing a Democrat which was somehow involved with the whole thing... The politics of this book are mostly lost on me, but I'm pretty sure that's about what happened.

But somewhere in the middle of this book, Colson becomes a Christian. Just like that. He goes from a life completely enslaved to selfish motives and sinister tricks with no religion or thoughts of God at all to giving all of himself over to the transforming power of Jesus Christ... starting when a friend gives him a copy of Mere Christianity and moving through a deep intelectual and emotional struggle lasting about a week. And then suddenly everything is different, he joins prayer groups and starts making decisions based on the Bible's teaching- though he's only a new Christian lacking knowledge, he is unquestionably different in character and personality. He talks about praying and feeling the moving of the Holy Spirit within him, and about this deep communion with Jesus Christ that is frankly unlike anything I have ever experienced.

See that's what bothers me- it seems like if I really beleived these things, I mean beleived that they were really real in every since of the words, I would live my life very differently. And it would mean something to me, other than just a pattern of life I go along with to maintain a decent status quo. It should move me to my very core, the realities of the gospel and what they mean for me.

For those of you who have been here all along, remember Sam's Narnia post? He talked about how he thought true Christianity was like stumbling through the wardrobe to find yourself suddenly in a world of wonder and joy and beauty. I thought that was the most amazing thing I'd ever read, and at the time it rang true for me. I was in a period in my life where I was very emotionally wrapped up in the things of God, but that was so long ago. I'm still here, and it's still winter. Always winter, and never Christmas. I'm still waiting to meet the roaring lion on the road, or to do battle face to face with the White Witch. I'm still waiting to see the snow melt and the truth and power of my cause to be revealed, to be crowned in the palace and to know for sure that this will always be mine- because once a queen of Narina, always a queen of Narnia. I'm still waiting to go on this wild adventure and find all of these things out for myself that I read about in the Bible and in spiritual books... but it's just not happening. I'm so disapointed and frusterated with myself.

So I don't know. I just don't know.