What shakes your faith?

So, by now, anyone who reads my blog may have figured out that I'm a little frustrated by my romantic relationship status. (No, seriously - it's true!) It's been interesting to me to reflect on why this is such a difficult thing for me at this point in time, and the effect it's been having on my inner and outer life.

I wasn't always this downcast about the subject. In fact, I distinctly remember, shortly after my last break-up, feeling confident that, even though I didn't know what the Lord was doing, or what I was meant to take from that last relationship, that it ended as part of His divine purposes and that He knew my deep desire for a family and was working all things out in His perfect time. That belief allowed me to be surprisingly OK with the demise of what I had thought was a potential lifetime partnership over 3 years in the developing.

I stayed pretty cool over the next several months, trying a little online dating but not being overly anxious about the whole business. I kept on trucking with my job and with getting more involved with other Christians on social justice issues. And then a whole bunch of things started happening at the beginning of 2007 that started shaking me up faith-wise, and I never really bounced back.

Funny - I was going to write about how the whole not-being-in-a-relationship thing was what had shaken my faith, but as I think back, it really wasn't. That just happens to be the bit that I'm least able to deal with in a time when my faith is pretty banged up. The thing that really got me was how my housing situation played out in early 2007. I was looking back through my entries to see if I'd really written about it before; I couldn't find anything, but I'll try to give a concise recap in case I'm repeating myself.

Through discussions as part of the leadership team in this group, I really started to feel a calling to live in community with other Christians, and I started pretty actively trying to seek out and pursue that option with some other members of the group who felt deeply interested. I was very excited about the idea and the way that I thought it might take me to a really different level of commitment and depth in my faith; so much so that, even though I love my landlords and hate moving, I felt very ready for this new potential housing situation. There was even this place that we saw that I felt had so much potential for being this amazing center of engaged faith in the community; being able to purchase it would definitely require some miraculous movements, but I'd seen God do those sorts of things before, and it didn't seem crazy to me to think about Him doing the same kind of thing at that time and in that place.

That's not how it went down, though. The house we looked at felt too far out of range for some of the people, others weren't sure if they wanted to make this kind of shift given other things that were going on in their lives, and then there was this whole question about whether a single person could really mix and properly relate with the married couple(s) in that living situation. The potential group kind of disintegrated off into the ether; and then at the same time on my end, my roommate at the time felt like she couldn't wait any longer to figure out her housing for the upcoming year, and she made arrangements to move.

I was devastated - and I felt betrayed somehow, rightly or wrongly. I was upset at the people with whom I'd been talking about the community living, feeling that they'd been able to string this conversation out over months without any consequences for their housing stability, while I was left in the lurch. I was upset with my roommate at the time, with her anxiousness and impatience with my exploration of this new housing option, and with the timing that led her to sign an agreement for a new apartment the very day I cam home to tell her I wasn't moving. Maybe it was stupid and unfair, but I felt like I'd been abandoned and left to scramble, while all these other people were safe and secure.

Mostly, though, I think I felt betrayed by God. Why had he led me through all these discussions, all this searching - and then I ended up not only disappointed with the opportunity that didn't materialize, but also penalized for choosing to explore it by the departure of my roommate of 5 years? Why that kind of timing? Why the discovery, a few months later and just weeks after I'd committed to stay in my current apartment, of exactly the kind of Christian community I'd been seeking - with a room just becoming available? Did I just read all the signs wrong? Did I misunderstand where He was trying to direct me? How come all of these things in my life - my housing, my finances, my involvement with the Christian group - seemed to come apart as a result of trying to pursue this thing that seemed like such a strong leading? Did I make all that "calling" stuff up, and run away crazy over something that wasn't God, but was just my own imagination?

Over the course of the next several months, I started to think that I might have been making a lot of things up. My perception of my family as this tight, close-knit unit was tremendously rattled by events that fall; my sense of having been placed in a job that was so well-suited to me and of following God's lead in that job was rattled be events all throughout the year, and continuing to this day. On top of all that, an end-of-year emotional breakdown precipitated by interactions with my most recent ex-boyfriend killed my earlier resolve to have faith about the whole marriage/family thing. Since then, I've been rolling around in an overall sense of lack of faith, lack of purpose, and lack of options - along with a vague sense that God a) just doesn't care if I'm unhappy and b) may be testing and taunting me for the heck of it.

I'm trying to stay positive, keep going, keep fighting the despair, mostly because I don't know what on earth else to do with myself. I keep looking for that "win" I mentioned in my post the other day. It's not that there hasn't been anything positive going on - I had a good class this semester, I now have a roommate who doesn't make me want to shoot things or people, and I like the latest volunteer project I've been involved with. I shouldn't discount those, because they are good and they help keep me afloat. But I feel like the "losses" of the past year or so have touched such deep emotional things for me that I want a win that has the same impact, but in a positive direction. I don't think it quite works like that, though; while destruction can be almost instantaneous, rebuilding is always gradual and takes much longer. I guess I just have to keep counting the steps that make up the ground I feel like I've been losing, and be patient until I get back to somewhere I can more easily recognize and celebrate.

I wouldn't mind, though, that big restorative change, something where I can really see that I'm getting back to rights and not just plodding. Like a miracle, like a healing ... aren't those supposed to happen, too?