Easy?

It is not always easy holding onto what I profess to believe. We all change over time. If we don’t, we stop living, we stop being human, we stop experiencing the world around us, we descend into… who knows what.
The process of giving up to the ether our beliefs, ideas, understandings can be a wearying endeavor. If we seek Truth – honest, real, legitimate Truth – we have to be willing to give up on preconceived ideas even if those ideas bring us great comfort. To grow is to move on, to move forward, to push through the shim that clouds our vision of things before us.
The process is disquieting. If I profess to believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob… if I profess to believe in Jesus as the Christ… if I profess to believe that the Good News is truly good and available for all of us, then I can do nothing less than allow all that I perceive of myself to be stripped away in order to understand… in order to be discover the “me” that I am meant to be.
“Consider it pure joys, my brothers, when ever you face trails of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking in anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.”
I’ve come back to this verse so many times. I believe it to be true.
Then, of course, there is this quote from Ann Rice:
“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds — justification, confirmation, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to a whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”
See, it isn’t easy! We fail all the time. Mercy. Grace.