I know there are people who have actually gone from misery to
happiness, but they didn’t do it by walking through three steps; they
did it because they had a certain set of parents and heard a certain
song and knew somebody who had a certain experience and saw some movie,
read some book, had something happen to them like a car wreck or a trip
to Seattle. Then they called on God, and a week later read something in a
magazine or met a girl in Wichita, and when all this had happened they
had an epiphany, and somebody may have helped them fulfill what this
epiphany made them feel, and several years later they rationalized this
mystic experience with three steps, then they told the three steps to us
in a book. I’m not saying they weren’t trying to be helpful; I bring
this up only because life is complex, and the idea that you can break it
down or fix it in a few steps is rather silly.
The truth is there are a million steps, and we don’t even know what
the steps are, and worse, at any given moment we may not be willing or
even able to take them; and still worse, they are different for you and
me and they are always changing. I have come to believe the sooner we
find this truth beautiful, the sooner we will fall in love with the God
who keeps shaking things up, keeps changing the path, keeps rocking the
boat to test our faith in Him, teaching us to not rely on easy answers,
bullet points, magic mantras, or genies in lamps, but rather rely on His
guidance, His existence, His mercy, and His love.
Personally, I was miserable before I understood these ideas, but now I am so happy I laugh all the time, even in my sleep.
This passage was excerpted from Searching For God Knows What.
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