Jazz is great for calming me down.

Man, is that the truth. I love Jazz, all kinds except "acid" from the 60s and the more cringe-tacular "flute" jazz birthed in the 70s. So generally I love Jazz music. Okay, what I really mean is I like Miles Davis. Most of his melodies go down smooth and I think the trumpet can be one of the sweetest sounding instruments when it's played right. The point is, I love Miles because he calms me down. I need some calming. Honestly... today was terrible. And by terrible I mean horrific according to comfortable American standards, of course. I say all this in lieu of being exposed a ton to Compassion International and the plight of impovershed families around the world this past month, and so with this in mind I understand how spoiled rotten I am to have clean water and my own bed to sleep in, but please, I want to rant. So lucky I have this blog where I can do just that...

I've been feeling unproductive and detached lately, and the newness of Myrtle Beach and Ripley's Aquarium is wearing off quickly and unexpectedly. The community thing, it turns out, is still hard. It's like experiencing genuine or even good community is the most complicated puzzle there ever was or ever will be, and I am searching and waiting for the perfect solution or some smidge of an answer that might unlock this ridiculous contraption... so all that going on, and my quiet times are lacking, I can't remember the last time I regularly confessed to the Lord through out the day and I've already made and lost the same friends at work. In the same month.

Okay so all of this and today, I start to feel depression a'creepin'. Creep it does, slowly but surely, ready to ruin my perspective - and for me, it's all about perspective - and so I'm just waiting for it to go away. And then in the middle I'm like, "Okay Alicia, you for real need to get outta bed and just bike ride or something." So I head out to downtown Conway, and it was fine, listening to my favorite mewithoutYou and pedalling away. Then I hit a terrible pot hole, and my bike started wheezing, and naturally I assumed it was one of my tires messed up from earlier. I tried, for almost an hour straight, to pump air back into my front tire, but for all my work I just made it worse. My tire was wholly flat in a matter of minutes, and the pump just wasn't working. That plus the fact that as I'm sitting there in blazing heat, tens of people walk or boat on by, oggling and staring... at that point I was a thirty minute ride from home, a good fifteen minutes more with a flat tire. The sun was going down, and I started to panic a little, since we're not in the best part of town. So I sat there and breathed and prayed that God would fix my tire magically, or help me to fix it, or that at least something 'good' would come from the whole experience. I prayed for comfort, prayed that the Holy Spirit would fill me, that I would stop being so nasty and negative about it all. And then... all that really came was more frustration from me, an even more flat tire if it were possible, exhuastion from trying for almost an hour straight to pump the tire back to life, me covered in sweat, and more of the same people walking by but this time, ignoring me and my impatient huffs. I gave up and began riding my bike back home anyway, and let me tell you riding a bike with a flat tire is like swimming through mud with 100 mph wind resistance. Just saying. As I squeaked my way home, it hit me hard that God had not answered my prayer the way I'd wanted, which seeemed unfair, as I gave him multiple options... and it hit me even harder, way down in the bowels of my heart, that God had rather answered with a big fat "NO!" and decided to make the whole experience worse as it went on, as it surely did. And poppycock to everyone who is saying to me right now "It is just God testing your faith so it will grow big and strong," because my faith is no bigger and all that resulted was a heart that felt abandoned. On my way home my bike lock fell apart and when I couldn't put it back together, I spat out a curse word, and I am one of the biggest prudes in the world and my family will tell you all about how I never curse... and so began a quiet (or not so quiet) rebelling against God in my heart. Hurt from rejection, still lost in negativity from my bout of depression earlier, and bitter because my poor pedalling legs were about to fall off.

These are times when I doubt like no other mother, where I let sinfulness pour into me and I do a lot of stupid stuff, like curse to the winds, steal something of my sister's, eat all sorts of unhealthy things in huge quantities, scream haphazardly at the dog for getting on my nerves, all that stuff. I start thinking about my salvation, and what it means, and if all this 'duty' is really worth it, and doubting whether I am really into this whole Christian thing, because it doesn't seem to be working out so well.

After today I feel like I've broken up with God.