Doubt is normal, we are told; confusion is par for the course. Growing up is hard to do and I'm not even halfway through. It's not that I've stopped believing, but I have. I say I haven't, but my actions are speaking louder. I doubt.

And the answer, I suppose, is to just keep on. Keep on doing. Keep on saying. Keep on obeying. Trust that what looks like night is giving way to day and that what feels dead is waiting for resurrection. That's all. I'm no stranger to this--this darkness, this circular game where we don't hold hands and collapse in a pile of laughter at the end. I keep thinking that the old answers must be the same answers because 2+2 is always 4 and it isn't up for discussion.

In the past year I've been practicing the art of methodology. Figuring the addition of practicals and principles and summing them into arbitrary ideals of what this life is supposed to feel like, and always coming up short: 2+2 = 3.7 and sometimes only 1.9. How is this strange math possible?

I'm learning what it means when Paul says we see but through a glass dimly: we see only in part. Our answers are still conjugated by decimal points, portions of a bigger whole.

I'm not saying that there aren't absolutes and that we must laud question--it is right that we should know the whole truth and as much of it as possible. But I am saying that my dim glass has kept me from wiping it clean and seeing more. I've grown content with fuzzy ideas and parroting blindly.

There is truth to be had and I don't have it all. I've been judgmental and frustrated and consumed with righteousness, with getting it right. And I'm finally finding that if this part is only one part, and that there is so, so much more, then the old answers might not be the only right answers. Maybe they are just part of it, too.

The earth is hard
The treasure fine.
Dig--Jars of Clay