Notes from "past me" and Above

When I was fifteen I lived a sort of double life. On the one side I had my home and school life, which I hated. I was taking care of my pregnant mother, who did not seem concerned that I often missed school to stay home with her, and planning my school schedule around when I could get away to go to the park and smoke. The other side of my life was my church life. I would try to do devotionals and read my bible so that I could go to camp and be a part of the mission trip. I wanted desperately to fit in with the happy teenagers at youth group who got good grades and had happy home lives. They all seemed perfect and I wanted to do anything for them to accept me.
As is usually the case, one side of life will eventually win over the other. The church side lost for a short time. As I aged I became angrier about my life and decided to try to run away from it. I was pissed at God because His people didn't love me and he hadn't bettered my life situation. I was sure I could do better on my own, and for a while it seemed that I did.
Flash forward to now. I'm not angry at God anymore for my situation, but the habit I formed of trying to better myself on my own terms has been a hard one to break. Instead of praying about decisions, I think them over for a while and say a last minute prayer while my decision is already being formed in my head. Instead of spending time meditating on God's word, I let my mind wander where it will and to what it will. I know that this way of doing things doesn't work; seeking God's direction and spending time with Him has been something that has helped me more in the past than anything else. Yet going on my own strength is a hard habit to break, especially in the last three years, when i was sure that I was finally becoming able to "take care of myself".
I recently decided to finish reading a book that I had never finished called "The Problem of Pain" by C.S. Lewis. While skimming the book, I found various passages that I had underlined on previous tries at reading it. One such marked passage was marked with a bus transfer from 2007. I read the passage, and I felt a piercing ache in my chest. It was like the passionate and trusting me sending a message to the vulnerable and lost me. It's somewhat long, but I will quote it here now. It is found in Chapter 6 (Human Pain). Lewis has already discussed Divine Omnipotence, Divine Goodness, Human Wickedness, and The Fall of Man; he has established that God is all-knowing, the source of goodness, and that man is fallen and in need of saving. Hopefully with that short set-up, the following passage will make sense. I have underlined the portions and words that I had underlined in 2007.

"If the first and lowest operation of pain shatters the illusion that all is well, the second shatters the illusion that what we have, whether good or bad in itself, is our own and enough for us. Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us. We 'have all we want' is a terrible saying when 'all' does not include God. We find God an interruption. As St Augustine says somwhere, 'God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full - there's nowhere for Him to put it.' Or as a friend of mine said, 'We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it's there for emergencies but he hopes he'll never have to use it.' Now God, who has made us, knows what we are and that our happiness lies in Him. Yet we will not seek it in Him as long as He leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for. While what we call 'our own life' remains agreeable we will not surrender it to Him. What then can God do in our interests but make 'our own life' less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible source of false happiness? It is just here, where God's providence seems at first to be most cruel, that the Divine humility . the stooping down of the Highest, most deserves praise. We are perplexed to see misfortune falling upon decent, inoffensive, worthy people - on capable mothers of families or diligent, thrifty little tradespeople, on those who have worked so hard, and sho honestly, for their modest stock of happiness and now seeem to be entering on the enjoyment of it with the fullest right. How can I say with sufficient tenderness what here needs to be said? It does not matter that I know I must become, in the eyes of every hostile reader, as it were, personally responsible for all the suffereings I try to explain - just as, to this day, everyone talks as if St Augustine wanted unbaptised infants to go to Hell. But it matters enormously if I alienate anyone from the truth. Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for the moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed; that all this must fall from them in the ende, and that if they have not learned to know Him they will be wretched. And therefore He troubles them, warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they will have to discover. The life to themselves and their families stands between them and the recognition of their need; He makes that life less sweet to them. I call this a Divine humility because it is a poor thing to strike our colours to God when the ship is going down under us; a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up 'our own' when it is no longer worth keeping. If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had. The same humility is shown by all those Divine appeals to our fears which trouble high-minded readers of Scripture. It is hardly complimentary to god that we should choose Him as an alternative to Hell: yet even this He accepts. The creature's illusion of self-sufficiency must, for the creature's sake, be shattered; and by trouble or fear of trouble on earth, by crude fear of the eternal flames, God shatters it 'unmindful of His glory's diminution'. those who would like the God of Scripture to be more purely ethical, do not know what they ask. If God were a Kantian, who would not have us till we came to Him from the purest and best motives, who could be saved? And this illusion of self-sufficiency may be at its strongest in some very honest, kindly, and temperate people, and on such people, therefore, misfortune must fall."

I know not everyone will find this as encouraging as I have, nor get as much hope from it as I did. When thinking about what he says here and linking it to different bible passages I know, I am filled with awe that the creator of the universe is willing to accept me and comfort me even after I have turned to anything and anyone but Him; that the very one who deserves my praise is willing to lower himself and love my pitiful cries for grace and mercy.

Now, go and read anything by C.S. Lewis, because the man was a very gift to humans.