I wrote the most interesting diary entry today. Real diary entry. I don't write those very often, and interesting ones even less often! But today's was really, really interesting...

"Honestly, left to myself, I find it hard to believe you can learn to belong anywhere. You don't learn to belong, my heart says, you just do belong somewhere, and you can't do anything about it.

"What's funny is, I don't believe I belong to any location. I believe I belong to people. I belong to Stephen; I belong to Grandma and Grandpa. I never 'learned' to belong in those places; I just do.

"I don't belong to anybody at church. That's why I have had such a hard time feeling accepted there. No one has taken me as their ward to love and protect. When at my home church, I feel as though many people there believe I am theirs to love and protect, because they were involved somehow in loving and protecting me as I grew up.

"I've said before that the trouble that my dad caused forced my family to come together and protect Mom, and me and Sam. (Now this part is really interesting, pay attention.) We weren't the cause of the accident or the accident itself. The accident was that we were alone without a dad and Mom was alone without a husband. And so, my family came together to clean up after the accident, and take care of what remained--me, Mom, and Sam."

Did you catch that word, "accident"? I did, and it led me to the rest of the entry:

"I suppose that the sense of the lack of control over what defined our lives had somewhat of a crippling effect to me, in a way. (And perhaps to Sam.) We weren't told we could overcome our circumstances--just that they were an unfortunate accident that had to be endured. So I've grown up leaning on a crutch, so to speak.

"...Absorbing...Processing...

"So I've got it in my head that sometimes things just happen, and there's nothing you can do about them. And it's a crutch.

"So let me think here. Is this...a godly...mindset...to have. ? Or biblical?

"That is the question.

"I am not going to pretend to have the answers right now. (YIKES!) I really do not know what the Bible has to say about this. I will have to research it.

"The end!

"For now, anyway.

"(My mind is going, 'AAAAAGGGHHH!!!!! MUST...HAVE...ANSWERS!!!')"

I am most certainly going to have to research this in the Bible.

Today's Facebook status: Stephanie wonders if anybody on this green earth gets as absorbed in the question of their identity as I do!

In other words, does anybody in this green earth have as much of an identity crisis as I do? Ugh!

Actually...Now that I think about it...I think my father-in-law does.

-Stephanie

P.S. Oh my gosh, this is entry #990! GEEZ!

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Interesting conversation with Stephen on his lunch break. I talked to him about all this stuff and we started talking about salvation and sanctification and how that all works, exactly, and he had to leave and we'll have to finish the discussion later, but the conversation "ended" on this note:
Stephanie: "So, you believe that before Christ, people do good things out of selfishness, but after Christ, people do good things because of Christ?"
Stephen: "Well, I believe that after Christ, there will be times when you do good things without any feeling of trying on your part. It'll just come naturally."
Stephanie: "Okay, I never do good things without putting in effort."
Stephen: "Are you doing them to look good?"
Stephanie (after a moment): "No... It's been a long time since I have done good things in order to look good. But I do them because I think they are the right thing to do. Because I know in my head that the Bible says do or don't do these things, and I know that's the standard we have to live up to, so I try and try to live up to that standard."

Doing good unto otheres is always an internal war, because I think I know what the right thing is to do, and I want to do the right thing because I want to show love to people, but I hold back because I'm afraid. I'm not sure at this point what it is I'm afraid of. But the instant I think of something that might be good to do, I'm filled with fear as I second-guess whether it is truly what that person needs at this moment.

I wasn't always this way, by the way. I didn't always second-guess myself so much. But upon meeting hordes of different people and doing what I thought was the right thing to do and it ending not as I expected, I have very little confidence in my ability to guess what the right thing to do is anymore.

I suppose it's because I'm so very specific. I can know that it is good to show love to people because we are commanded to love one another, but is this way specifically the right thing to do for this specific person? That's my dilemma.

Sigh....Questions, questions, questions.

You know what's weird? I encounter this internal war more with people from my church than I do with people from my work. What in the world is the difference between the two groups of people that causes me to feel so much peace about saying things that pop into my mind when I am around coworkers, and to feel worlds of conflict when I'm around believers?

I think it may have to do with being around about believers of the Reformed theology and whether or not the things that pop into my head reflect my own non-Reformed theology, and whether or not they might sniff out that non-Reformed theology and pounce on me for it. Whereas when I'm with nonbelievers, who cares whether what I say is Reformed or not Reformed? The point is that it is Christ-centered, and my coworkers need Christ! They can sort out their own theology later; I just want to share a Christ-centered perspective with them.

I'll end this with one final thought. This may be God's way of nudging me out of help for believers and into help for nonbelievers. In other words, this may be God's way of nudging me out of my former (perceived) job of encouraging believers and into a new job of reaching nonbelievers. We'll see.

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