Tangled..........................

     I don't remember much of his response, except that when I said I didn't think God could love me, he said, "God has to love you.  That's God's job."  Some years later I asked him to tell me about this first meeting.  "I felt," he said, "that you had gotten yourself so tangled up in big God questions that it was suffocating you,  Here you were in a rather desperate situation, suicidal, clearly alcoholic, going down the tubes.  I thought the trick was to help you extricate yourself enough so you could breathe again.  You said your prayers weren't working anymore, and I could see that in your desperation you were trying to save yourself:  so I said you should stop praying for a while, and let me pray for you.  And right away, you seemed to settle down inside."


-Anne Lamott,  Traveling Mercies:  Some Thoughts On Faith