The Sight of the Stars Makes Me Dream

Being the sort of person that I am (the sort that thinks way too damn much), I can say with certainty that uncertainty blows.

I hate to admit this to the world at large, but I've reached a point in my life where nothing is set in stone and I'm flailing like a fish out of water. Some people thrive in the face of uncertainty. Some people fail. I am the sort that fails.

I was raised to believe certain things, to think a certain way. The ideologies and theologies of my parents were never forced upon me, but they were an unquestioned way of life. When it came to religion, I believed what they believed, even if my mind could not wrap itself around the mysteries of miracles, the possibility of the impossible. My heart always longed for the Greater, the Bigger, the In Charge. I wanted to have that fire in my belly, that passion that others had. I wanted to KNOW that what I believed was TRUE.

As I've gotten older, I've begun to question everything. I question myself, I question God, I question other people's Gods, I question The Cat. Asking, asking, asking and the only answers I've gotten aren't so much anwers as they are more questions.

I will confess that this journey of discovery is scaring the holy living shit out of me.

If God exists and I question him, will he punish me? But if God doesn't exist and I put my faith in him, does that make me naïve? Is God who and what I think he is? Is he something different? When certainty comes only in death and its long walk into the light, what the hell am I supposed to think in the here and now?

What scares me even more than the not knowing is deviating from a path that has been walked by almost everyone in my family. Disagreeing with them, especially when I am searching for answers and don't know where I stand, sets my nerves on edge and my teeth to gritting. I can not argue my position. I don't even know what my position is. I am indefensible but I feel defensive. If I were Jericho and the Canary family status quo was marching around my walls, I'd be skeptical that their battle cry could bring me down... but yet? What if it could?

It's that "what if" that has me scared. I don't want to wait to see if the impossible is possible. I don't want to wait for the walls to fall to determine what I believe. I want to know now, or if that's impossible, then I want to believe something - anything - so passionately that even if it's wrong, even if God looks at me with such supreme disappoint that it breaks my heart in two for all eternity, I will be able to look myself in the eyes and say, "You were wrong, but at least you were true to what you believed."

I don't like being a fence-straddler, but I REALLY don't like not knowing whose fence I'm on and whose pastures are around me. I just don't like not knowing, and I'm not enjoying the process of finding out.

Now taking applications from anyone who has the answers: Apply within.