I'm uncertain about a lot of things these days. Some future events, certainly. I'm going back to school this fall, and my head is full of questions like "how will we manage not to starve to death in an ice-cold apartment this winter?" But uncertainty about practical matters I can handle; it's the cosmic questions, the ones that tell me what my universe looks like, that are difficult. I won't go into the details right now, but I'm uncertain about a lot of these questions right now. Even the ones that I have down ("[I] believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty... [a]nd in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, etc.") are by no means settled as to shape. What does it mean to believe these things?
When you combine these fundamental uncertainties with self-knowledge of my malleable nature, you get an armadillo. I don't want to read books of theology that might take advantage of my fears. I don't want to take classes that will unduly challenge my always-fragile faith. I don't even want to talk to my friends who are taking some of the same journeys that I am. In short, I'm curled up inside myself. This doesn't make for good relationship building, or even happy chatting amongst friends. It's definitely not the open-hearted person that I want to be. And I don't know how to fix it myself. The only thing that I know how to do at this point is be honest about what's going on, even though I can't be open about what's going on inside the armadillo. And as I ponder this, I begin to wonder if the whole point of this experience is to teach me helplessness. And I begin to hope that Jesus fits inside an armadillo curl.
