LOL... I just read my last entry. I did get homework done. :) I am SO glad Spring Break starts tomorrow though... As soon as I pick up Steve from the airport. :)

Steve's brother called me "sis"!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is SO SWEET!!!!!

He's, like, 19 too. I feel so accepted! I don't know why God decided to bless me with such great in-laws, but boy, am I grateful. :D

Wait... God?

I have this on-off faith right now. :P I guess I'm on again.

I think it was Tess of the D'Urbervilles that depressed me. Too much fate involved. Too much dark sadness. I suppose I shouldn't read it, then. Or talk about it... But it's one of those stories that just grabs you.

Oh, poor Tess! The sweet innocent... I hate stories of abuse of innocent people. :( I suppose I find too much of my trusting nature in her.

My faith seems to get shattered whenever I find reason to believe that the world does not have as much good in it as I think it has. I know that isn't Biblical--"There is no one good; no, not one" and Jesus' words, "Why do you call me good? There is only one who is truly good." But I just can't handle a world totally depraved of any good.

I don't think that's completely incongruous with truth--Wesleyan or Calvinist. Stephen says that Calvinists believe God prepares people's hearts to hear the gospel. Wesleyans do too. We call it prevenient grace. Where Calvinists and Wesleyans differ is that Calvinists believe God only prepares some people's hearts. Wesleyans believe he prepares all hearts, and whether or not the person sees it or grabs hold of it is up to the person.

I don't know how to reconcile the idea of God creating people that wouldn't accept it, though. That's always been my question. Stephen says Wesleyan belief puts people's free will above God's power. I heard that and asked him if he'd thought about how Calvinist belief reconciles God's omnipotence and God's love. Interestingly, he had never thought of that before. Which made me go, THAT'S what he's been missing!!

I knew when I first met him that he had to be missing something. He was so stinking sure of what he believed that it just instantly made me go, This guy's missing something. You can't be THAT sure and understand everything that goes into what you believe. I know that sounds crazy if you haven't ever thoroughly thought through what you believe. When you do think it every last bit of it through and look at it from every single angle, you'll realize how uncertain everything is.

Anyway, that's been the source of our conflicts lately. "Stephen, how can you be so sure of everything?" "Stephanie, how can you not see how sure everything is?" GRR.

Anyway. Not getting up in arms. We're dealing with this stuff over Spring Break, when we meet with his old pastor, our premarital counselor. Right now, I'm going to lunch--except I want to say one last thing that I couldn't slip in earlier.

Stephen brought something really neat to light to me the other day. We'd been talking about my fluctuating faith. It was on at that point, or climbing slowly to on. He said, "You know what? I think that you believe with your heart. But when it comes to your head, you have trouble."

He is so right.

I am a complete toss-up between a heart-thinker and a head-thinker. I swing back and forth between the two. (You've probably seen that in this diary, if you've been reading long! :) ) When I'm a head-thinker, my faith suffers, because reasoning just points me in so many different directions that I can't make sense of faith. When I'm a heart-thinker, though, it's easy to believe in God. I don't know why. I suppose that's the "knowing" that people talk about. "I know in my heart." (Oh, the cliches! Ugh.) But I always think of "knowing" as something you do with your head. "Feeling" is what you do with your heart.

Anyway. So that's the source of my conflict, my faith struggles. I guess I'll always deal with it (yuck). Well... We'll see where it gets me at the end of my life. :)

Okay, I've really got to go to lunch now. My first deep entry in a while!! Yay! :D

-Stephanie

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