I'm a doubting Thomas. I took a promise but I do not feel safe. Oh me of little faith...

Lyrics/Title today comes from Nickel Creek a folk/new/bluegrass band that you should all check out. Their newest album has a song I'm sure I'll put on this year's camp CD called Doubting Thomas-here's the chorus. Been living these words the last few days. Click the title to see their website.

I've written three different versions of a resignation letter in the last five months. Goodbyes are not something I tend to look forward to when all parties don't understand why it's being said. For me, it has become clear that soon there won't be any denying who/what I am, and that once I'm revealed I'll have enemies sitting where my party guests were.
Damn, what a poetic/dramatic way of saying what I'm going through.

I LOVE DRAMA!

There how's that for a previous post plug.

The truth is I suffer from a disease passed down through my father, both grandfathers, and probably other branches of my family tree going up-I always know what I should do. I have a deep sense of right and wrong, a mature cultivation of what wrong I'm willing to live with committing, a clear logic, and best and worst of all inherently accurate instincts-my gut is seldom wrong. When judging people, situations, pending consequences, or choices of which path to take my gut tends to be right a staggeringly high percentage of experiences.

I am cursed also in a new way that Dad and the Grandpas didn't think of, I have a deep sense of call, and not just a sense of purpose which I believe those men certainly had, but a belief that God (whatever he turns out to be!) has appointed certain things to me to take care of. For the last four years and one month he has wanted me in Bluffton, Indiana-a choice I would not have made for myself! Before that he needed me in a church on Michigan Street in Evansville. Before that I was a drunken college kid denying what my heart was saying and my gut knew was the right path for me.

This crisis isn't that I don't know what to do...

I know. I just don't think it's the best thing for the people in this situation I love. For the first time since SHE wounded my heart, I am torn between knowing the right path and believing I can overcome all the obstacles by choosing love.

Do I now choose that which I was called to do? Do I choose that which I am called to? Do I choose that which is best for me? Best for others? Do I do what I think God would want done or what God wants done with my life? What if they are different?

In all scenarios I can look at this time and be proud, moved, amazed, awed, assured that I was right in coming and God came with me...but it's fast becoming clear that I have built a temple that would stand before all men as a symbol of God's love-that I am holding up with my own faith. It will crumble the second I step away from it!

I know what I should do.

I know what I will do.

For the first time in a long time I know they aren't the same thing.

I am mourning my own loss of faith in my gut, in my unflinching desire to do what God wants, and in the tradition of right choices I carry with me.

But the temple may stand for a little while longer...