There are times when what’s going on inside me cannot be described or even understood. Times when emotions bubble up suddenly and then disappear just as fast, when my spirit seems to be chewing on something I cannot see, or remember, when everything in my neat little paradigm is tilted, shaken, demolished. The last couple of weeks have been one of those times.

I’m reading a book called, "Abba’s Child" by Brennan Manning. A friend of mine read another of Manning’s books, "Ragamuffin Gospel," and kept throwing the book against the wall every few pages. It profoundly challenged much of her paradigm of God, and is still today reshaping it.

I understand what she went through. I have yet to throw the book against the wall, but that’s only from emotional paralysis. I predict sometime soon that will pass and the book will regularly sail across the room and slam into whatever wall is closest. It is challenging the core beliefs convictions I hold about myself and about God.

I’ve had a copy of this Norman Rockwell painting hanging in my room since I was about thirteen. The first time I saw it I recognized myself in it. I am, have always felt I was, that awkward little girl whose gaze drifts between the movie star in the magazine and my own  clumsy, decidedly unfeminine image in the mirror; dreaming, hoping, wishing, praying that I will one day look in the mirror and see the beautiful movie star woman staring back at me.

My mother looked like a 40s pin-up sweater-girl, complete with the large, pointy bosoms and curvaceous hips. Even with the gray hair and extra lumps of age she was stunning. I spent my childhood eager to grow up into what would surely be a body and face as radiant as my mom’s. It never happened. My sisters are as fabulously beautiful and talented as our mom but somehow those genes skipped me. Perhaps there just wasn’t enough left over. I am, after all, The Baby.

And there’s another part of me I cannot escape: The Baby. Who made everyone’s life difficult; spoiled, lazy, petulant, demanding, moody… the list goes on, but I won’t bore you.

Yes, yes, yes, of course over two years of intense counseling have given me new "thoughts" to think about myself, new paradigms to try on. But none of them seem to fit. None of them seem real or truthful.To say I even want to believe them would be a lie. They are dangerous, frightening. I’d prefer to stay in my safe corner where I know; where my paradigms have stood the test of time and at least produce predictable results.

Which begs the question, why am I reading this book? This book that is driving me a little nuts, that I regularly want to throw against a brick wall or over a steep cliff. And now we are back to the beginning of this post, the bubbling emotions and internal stuff that cannot be described. The closest I can come – and it sounds schlocky to be sure – is that God’s Spirit in me keeps prodding me, pulling me, and pushing me this direction. I could say no and push Him away, but the thing is, I don’t want to. I like being with Him.

I’ve gotten glimpses of God’s passion for me, His overwhelming, devastatingly wild mad love for me. I can’t sit with it for long. It’s too intense. It reveals every crack and deformity I have (and I have a lot!), and I have to run and hide. It’s too unbearable. Its not that I don’t want to be so close to Him; its that I cannot stand the intense heat of His gaze. He sees right through me and I find myself lacking. Severely lacking.

But I keep coming back. That kind of love is too compelling to stay away for long.

His love, which called us into existence, calls us to come out of self-hatred and to step into His truth. "Come to me now," Jesus says. "Acknowledge and accept who I want to be for you: a Savior of boundless compassion, infinite patience, unbearable forgiveness, and love that keeps no score of wrongs. Quite projecting onto Me your own feelings about yourself. At this moment your life is a bruised reed and I will not crush it, a smoldering wick and I will not quench it. You are in a safe place." — Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child