Did you ever wish you could turn off the voices in your head and your heart? Maybe just quiet them down a bit or convince them to discuss another topic so you can get down to the business at hand?

Yeah, me too.

I’m struggling today with an internal monologue (dialogue?) that says I should give up.

Give in.
Quit.
Retire.
Stop.

It’s a very seductive argument full of supporting documentation of past failures, tickling links back to my own weakened, bruised and self-defeating ego (if you can have an ego this deep down). It’s not eloquent or flowery or well-spoken, but it is loud and persistent and ceaseless and right.

To break the monotony of this pity soliloquy, I’ll share an example: Owen was baptized yesterday. Stood up with him and the whole family before a “contemporary” service of folks dressed in business-*very*-casual, held him over the font and promised to do things I’ll never do. And for what?

For the approval of my parents and in-laws?
To serve some nagging need to cover all my bases in afterlife bingo?
Because that’s what parents do?

I’m certainly not religious of, heaven help me (ha!), “spiritual” though I know I’ve tried. Raised Methodist but always questioning. Read the Bible, went to Sunday School and confirmation class and every church social, potluck dinner and lock-in this side of 10am.

Nothing.

Yet there I was yesterday sitting in a glorified gym on an uncomfortable chair listening to a preacher who was neither a particularly skilled orator or a convincing witness for the umpteenth time. But I didn’t leave or block him out, I tried to square the circle of my own knowledge, the world as I’d seen it, the words as I’d read them and the story as he spoke it, but I couldn’t.

If there was some message I was being given it was to actively *not* believe. I searched my heart and my head and even my hands but nothing happened. And by nothing I don’t mean crickets or silence, but I do mean that I wasn’t moved or spoken to in the affirmative but in the negative.

I’m being told not to believe. Actively told.

Is it me?
Is it God?
Is it Margaret?

And should I care one way or another? Should I differentiate?

All I know is that I don’t know anything. I just want to find a truly quiet place to consider and to silence and to shield and to escape.

I don’t want commiseration.
I don’t want consolation.
I don’t want comments or feedback or constructive criticism.

I want to truly hear what I’m being told, away from my own disdain and disbelief, apart from other appeasers.

I want to know what I’m being told, what I’m telling myself and if there’s a difference.

I want to get unstuck. I want to believe.