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Lately, I've realized that it's been a long time since I've been able to really feel God's presence. I mean I believe that God is present with me in Jesus Christ by the indwelling of the Spirit, but either through my shutting down of my emotions or my psychological state or my psych meds or something, I just haven't felt him present over the last several years. So as I've been journaling through my life in a dialogue with God [with a Learning to Love the Master group],I felt like God was asking me to journal about times when I have felt his presence with me. One of these was pretty significant in my faith journey and, not surprisingly, covered in shame. I didn't realize until I started creating a artistic rendering and writing about this visual experience that I found that I had not even talked about it with several of the people closest to me. So, as I move toward embracing this experience as from God, I thought sharing it with my community would be a good step.
I think it was in September 03, when I flew back to Louisville KY, to help sort out some of my mom's affairs. I was in the midst of a deep depression. That doesn't seem adequate to describe the darkness and despair I was feeling. I felt like I was in a different plane of existence from all those around me, unable to be touched by them. This depression also brought the loss of the feeling of God's presence. Overwhelming feelings of doubt and despair washed over me. I felt trapped in a life where I had the surface of a happy, fortunate life, but couldn't feel any of it. I couldn't feel any of the good things present in my life. I wrestled with a lot of doubt, feeling like I may have committed my life to a direction that was really a crock. My memories of this time of depression [which didn't end until May of 04] are like a dark, brooding dream. I felt tired of existing, but was unwilling to inflict my death on those around me. Trapped. Despair. I constantly strained to believe God existed, Jesus was real and I was actually a Christian. For the first time in my life as a believer, I didn't take communion because I felt I would be saying something untrue about myself. Shortly after this, I left for Louisville. I was traveling by myself. On the plane I was listening to Village songs and talking to God about my unbelief and my despair and how I was unable to lift myself out of it. So I was asking God to help me out and Psalm 148 came on my mp3 player. Karen is singing: "When I look into the heavens/Golden skies declare your glory/and I see your whisper/swirling clouds above me/revealing your silhouette." As I'm looking out my window, I see this unbelievable cloud formation. We are flying above this flat of clouds that stretches out as far as I can see. Then, there's these different clouds that rise up forming a galloping horse. At its feet are a spray of clouds that look like rising dust. It really looked like a galloping, white horse coming straight toward me. And in that moment, somewhere deep inside I said, "Of course, I believe in you, God." And I felt connected and chosen and experienced a glimmer of hope in my darkness. As I said, I feel a good bit of shame about this vision and the faith that it sparked. I think it's because I just can't find a rational explanation for why this would generate faith. God tells me that faith is not about reason; it's about the heart. When I was working on an adobe photoshop compilation to depict this vision, my 9-year-old son Jesse asked me about it. I told him about the cloud formation and his response was, "Maybe God put that there just for you." I told him I thought he was right and how God had helped my faith with it. So the picture is a merging of photos and sketches from the internet to approximate what I saw. It's really pretty close. I still struggle with doubting God's existence in my overactive brain, but I have to say, somewhere at the core of me, it's been settled for now.
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