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The world keeps spinning. It's rotations appear to be getting faster and faster but they're not. I'm distracted by the financial crisis, the election, the debates and as serious as the outcomes of these events are they serve as diversions from my personal and spiritual struggles.

I didn't start blogging as an outlet for my political opinions yet somehow I've been guilty of doing just that. I want to share my internal perspective and my spiritual journey. I have an appetite for personal expression and I've been diverted by current events.

How deep into personal thoughts, how honest can I be before I pass the boundaries of bravery and enter into the realm of foolishness? My opinions on or feelings about Sarah Palin, Barack Obama or government bailouts isn't personal or even original. My opinions are shared by millions and many write about these things with much more aptitude and craft than I'm able to. When I share, however, about my longing to feel the presence of God or about my loneliness or about my inability to curtail my obsessive self-sabotaging behavior, am I going too far? Have I entered an area that embarrasses the reader as well as myself? I don't know.

Lately, as I make my way in this teeming metropolis, I might see the curve of an ankle or a lip, a hand, the crease of a turning neck or the musculature of a shoulder and I get overcome with an aching emptiness. A smile or gesture can throw me off balance for several minutes. Is it odd? Is it God? An unseen spirit reaches into my chest and firmly presses it's narrow accusing finger on an acutely sensitive spot: "There", it says "Right there is where the work needs to be done, where you are lacking." It is an actual physical pain and as well as being painful it brings with it a heavy sadness.

I don't know that I have developed the tools to ease this pain. The old tricks have stopped working. I keep trying them but they don't work. I'm not sure what else to do. I try to follow what interests me and hope that I attract what I need. I ask those who've gone before me to walk with me, guide me, hold me, comfort me. I talk to lost loved ones who I feel are somehow still near. "I'm uncomfortable. I'm lonely. I miss you. Stay with me." Something has protected me. I ask daily to feel that protective and loving Presence with me as I go through the day. I attempt to be as humble as I can be. I say please and I say thank you and day after day I continue to be protected.

I pray for the knowledge of God's will for me and the power to carry that out. I think I'm doing that to the best of my ability. When I was first introduced to this concept it sounded great. How could God's will feel anything but good? I imagined an elated kind of blissed out higher consciousness. "I'm so spiritual, look at me - I'm carrying out God's will" - wearing beads and eating vegetarian curry. But the truth turns out to be much more pragmatic and human. Apparently God's will involves struggle and work. Sometimes God's will even involves feeling lonely and lousy yet having the fortitude to get up the next day and do it again.

I can't be reminded enough that I have continued to walk in unmerited favor. I thank God in advance for whatever is brought to me as it is only having come through extreme struggle that I've come to realize that God is good ALL the time.