The Seeking Daddy Project: Introduction

How did I get here?

I've asked myself that pithy question so many times in the last few weeks - er, months - er, year - er...more than a year and a half, really.  I wake up every morning and ask it.  I ask my family, my friends, my coworkers, my dog.  How did I get here?

I was raised in the church - a United Methodist church, to be exact.  At 12, I was confirmed in that church in my hometown, a small farmland community in southwestern Pennsylvania.  At 21, studying abroad in England, a Free Methodist church in Lancaster and the people I met there transformed my walk with God.  At 27, I was baptized (for the second time, by immersion) by a pastor who became like a second father to me into a Baptist church here where I now live in Raleigh, North Carolina.

I have always been close to God.  God - Daddy, Abba, Father, Creator, my Lord - has always been clear to me, easily accessible to me, even oftentimes audible to me. 

Until now.  Until the last year and seven months or so.

So now, for the first time in my life, I am questioning. Seeking.  Searching.  Wandering deeper into the desert than I ever knew possible.

In that time, everything I believed has seemingly fallen apart around me.  

In that time, I've been through some stuff.

I suffered through a viscerally heartbreaking and starkly eye-opening breakup that left me questioning not only my own judgment, but my ability to hear and understand God's will.

One of my dearest friends went to prison.

The pastor I loved and cherished for six years, who was my anchor in this once-foreign southern city (and, as I mentioned, like a second father to me), abruptly resigned and left the little church I've called home all the time I've lived here.

There's more, too, but this is beginning to look a bit like a laundry list of tragedies, which isn't my intention.

But now, there is silence.  Vastness.  I can't hear God's voice.  I haven't heard it in months - a year, maybe.  Worship feels hollow.  I haven't been to church in weeks; haven't been back to my home church in months.  Wednesday nights teaching fifth graders at AWANA feels fake, like handing out sticks of cotton candy to satisfy starvation.  Questions roll around in my head like tumbleweeds, bumping against each other, against the outer corners of my mind, shaking the dust of doubt all around in the emptiness.

Why would God lead me into something He knew would hurt me so badly?

Why would God let me get attached if He knew this would be the result?

How could he just leave?  How could he just abandon me?

Why would Daddy do this?  How could He be silent?  How could He let this happen?

There's more, again, but like I said, it gets repetitive after awhile.

I spent two years in England in my college and grad school days - the last time, in 2006, where I pursued a Master's in Screenwriting and Producing at the University of Westminster in London.  I spent that year almost entirely by myself.  It was the most spiritually challenging, growing, and dynamic year I have ever known.

During that time, I'll never forget it, there was a moment in my tiny dorm room, at 23 years old, thousands of miles away from my small-town home, that I felt God's love more clearly and tangibly than I ever have before or since.  God had been speaking to me for weeks about my future life, about what He wanted me to do for Him.  In that moment, as I prayed and worshiped, it was as if He had pulled me up onto His lap like a loving Father, held me in His arms, and whispered that He loved me so, so much.  He called me his precious child and His love enveloped me so distinctly that I was overwhelmed with it.  I wanted that moment to last forever.

Now, nearly eight years later, that moment is a distant, wistful memory, like a childhood dream.

Jesus said, "Seek and you shall find."  I miss God.  I miss my best friend, my confidant, my most trusted companion and the one person I could turn to when no one else understood.  I miss feeling like I'm part of a greater plan, like I have a purpose, like there's a reason for my life.  

I miss my Daddy.

And so, this year, I'm going to seek Him.  Every day, for the next year, I will post something here that reminds me of God in some way or another.

It won't always be deep, or long, or involved.  Sometimes it might just be a word or a phrase or a picture.  There will probably be lots of pictures of my dog - just to warn you.  As it is, right now, her love is the closest to unconditional love that I know.

So my goal for this year is to seek Daddy.  The Bible promises that if I seek Him, I will find Him.

Instead of how did I get here?, I'm changing the question to Daddy, Lord, God...where are you?