you've been warned. this is another recycled post (this one is from 11/1/04). i just got off the phone with jackson's counselor with his weekly update (he's doing well). he's starting on his second step (Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity). the conversation got me thinking about jax and his difficulty with finding his god. here's the post in its entirety (and in red!):
another self-indulgent, masturbatory post. i sent this e-mail to the jackal earlier this year during an e-mail exchange about god.
dear jax,
a long time ago (funny, i think i was exactly your age), there was a lot of shit going on in my home life. a lot of what i remember about it was the culmination of a whole series of events -- i wound up with a huge bruise and a sore neck from a slug i took to my face from my "stepfather person."
anyway, it was a tough time for me. dad was away at onu. i felt alone. i had a couple friends who were serious christians who told me that god would comfort me if i would only ask him. i so envied the way they saw their relationship to god, and desperately wanted what i thought they had. it really bugged me that i could not "get" it in the same way they did -- no matter how hard i tried. and i did try. hard. felt very bad that that "magic" wasn't there for me.
it took me a long, long time to feel comfortable with the god i KNEW i knew, but it was in such a different way.
you're so intimately involved with people of deep faith who know god in such a different way, jax. in a different way than you do. and you may not know you know god, are not sure about this god stuff at all, but someday you'll "get" it. god is right there with you, IN you, in us, in your brothers, in your guitar, in the snow, in the grass, in the DOGS. god is our love for you, your compassion for others, your struggles to be the best person you can be, the music you make. god is not -- for me, and i think for a lot of people, including you and dad, where others tell us to look. he's just there. we feel it, but not in the same way others do, so we wonder -- is that god? yes, it is.
you'll be just fine with that. someday. maybe today.
that's my prayer for today for you, my darling.
Posted by Stacey at September 20, 2006 12:29 PMVery beautiful Stace; and very well said. I remember the slug you took from that step-father person, I think. If it was at Christmas time that year, I was there, standing right behind you. Am I right? Anyway, the important thing is, you expressed thoughts of a true God so eloquently to your son. Thank you for sharing this.
Posted by: Trace at September 20, 2006 08:32 PMYou said it exactly how I see it. Thanks for putting it into words.
Posted by: Anji at September 22, 2006 01:42 AMAmen to that.
Posted by: Heather(aka Iris) at September 23, 2006 02:15 AM