I am far from being Mother Teresa. I think she was a great person but I have no desire to follow in her footsteps in terms of the sacrifices she made to achieve what she did. I don’t want to become a nun (leaving aside all the problems I have with several Catholic doctrines, I don’t want to be celibate for the rest of my life), and I don’t feel called to long term missions. But I really admire her response to her Dark Night. She continued in her work in spite of it.
I’ve been having a Dark Night of the Soul for months now. When I read the Bible, the passages are flat. They stay on the page like any other textbook, not like the living, breathing word of God. When I pray, it feels like my words hit the ceiling and bounce back at me. When I play music on my laptop and sing along to “It is Well with My Soul,” it rings false. I question whether my coming here was God’s will, whether He is the God of Deists rather than the God I believe in, whether He cares about the people I pray for. In my darkest moments I try to convince myself that God does not exist, but I can’t because it’s like telling myself the earth is flat or the sky is green.
In these times I always feel like I’m a horrible person. Even though it goes against my theological views on grace, I still have this concept of merit in my head regarding God. Like a westernized version of karma, I feel like if I’m going through a hard time, it’s because I haven’t been good enough. I haven’t helped enough people or done enough random acts of kindness, and one bad deed can wipe out all my ‘good’ credit. And, of course, I feel guilty about my doubt because so often the Church sends the message that doubt means your faith is weak.
I often feel alone in my faith, which makes things worse when I have a Dark Night. When I lived in Nevada, I didn’t have any Christian friends. Finding a good church was quite the undertaking and ultimately never did happen. I guess that experience helped prepare me for living here, where there isn’t even a mediocre church with services I can
understand and no Christians with a concept of God as a relational God. But even with a coterie of Christian friends, each person’s faith is personal and individual and they must make their own way, so I struggle through.
This is the most personal entry I’ve posted and I almost didn’t do it, but I feel like I need to be honest with my readers and maybe there are one or two out there going through something similar. For them I hope the following quote helps. I’ve posted it on my bedroom wall here in Turkmenistan.
“Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.”—Anne Lamott