Ooh you set my soul alight

Today I listened to this song on repeat for hours. Good times.

Tonight I had some really delicious Brazilian food and some good quality time, and then made a total fool of myself on BART. I am really bad at paying attention when I have my ipod in and I think that my friend is not on my same train. But there he was, right behind me for a while...and I had no idea. Oops. Dangeresque? Maybe. Or maybe blindness is a side effect of falling.

In other news, I love love my job. I feel super blessed.

I talked a bunch with Amanda tonight about God's will. Understanding God's will is something that I have always found to be tricky. (Sorry if I sound like a broken record to some of you, but you know as well as I that this is a constant struggle). Apparently, for some people, things just align when God approves. For me, I always feel like I have God's guidance, but ultimately he lets me do what I want and then learn and grow from it. Whenever I say the Lord's prayer, I am always struck by the line "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." But knowing thy will is the part that gets me. Actually, this reminds me a lot of how my faith is really cyclical. Let's back up for a minute. Almost a year ago, on 5/12/08, I wrote the following letter to myself as part of an ADX exercise:

"Erin,
Me at this moment: almost all of my thoughts are focused on finding an apartment. Some are on finals, but hardly any are on God. I need to rely on God and trust him that he'll provide me with a place to live. I'm coming off my "God Hug" high - but needing more to keep me motivated to continue in my quest for him. I want to know him. I want to know that he loves me. But when it's not obvious, I get easily frustrated and disinterested. I need patience. I need patience from God. But I am finding it hard to trust someone that I feel I just met and barely know. I wish I could go on roadtrip with God, so that we'd be forced to communicate. It's so easy to push thoughts of him out of my head. It shouldn't be.
...And that's where I am right now."

These are recurring themes in my faith. I get really distracted, I stop trying to know God, from hearing his guidance, and I get totally confused and frustrated. And then I get swept back up by him, putting me on a "God high." Then I keep up my renewed vigor for a while and but it slowly diminishes. And then it repeats. I'm on this brink right now - my vigor from this winter when I dove into the gospels has faded. I hardly have time (read: make time) to read the bible anymore, but I do still feel connected to God. I'm sure that at different points in our lives (no matter how brief or vaied), we approach God differently. So maybe right now the bible is not what I need to grow closer to God, but I'm not really trying for an alternative method. One thing I'm kind of sad about is that I don't think I really took advantage of Lent. Sure giving up my car seemed like it would be a challenge, but it really hasn't been. I don't feel like I stretched myself during this season. Maybe this is because I'm on my downslope? But I think that realizing where I am is a really big part of it. Now I can address it and maybe try to break the cycle.