What are you supposed to do when you are hurt because of your own fault? Because you trusted people when you knew better not to do so? Why, why do people respond in judgment so easily? Oh, how stupid I am! I know the difference between how things should be and how they actually are. So blasted stupid! I broke the social contract. I spoke and expected it to be a good thing for me, expected compassion and a willingness, rather than a reluctance, to help carry a burden. Oh, how stupid I was...

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For the second time in just a month, when I am struggling mightily, God brings someone who is struggling as much or more than I. He brings someone in need of comfort and compassion and support. This He brings when I am crying out for the same. What am I supposed to learn from that? I would rather curl in a ball in a corner and stay there for weeks on end so great is my hurt right now, but I can do no other than to embrace that person in her brokenness, to tell her that she is not alone, to speak the words I crave precisely because I do crave them. How intimately I know the longing to be bathed in compassion so fully and so completely that you can forgive yourself, that you can shed your own failure.

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As if this day could not be harder, I found myself sitting next to a too inquisitive person while waiting for blood work. I had brought Bonhoeffer's treatise with me. Praying since Thursday night has been difficult. Praying the Psalms equally so. I figured it was time to wade through his teaching again.

Oh, this woman wanted to know just about everything I know!

ARGH! WHY DO I KEEP FINDING MYSELF SPEAKING FOR THAT WHICH I AM THE ABSOLUTE WORST REPRESENTATIVE?

I admit, I probably brought some of her questions upon myself for I was reading the Psalms and the treatise aloud.

Despite the churning within me as I explained Confessional Lutheran doctrine, walked her through the Book of Concord, talked about Luther's teaching about the commandments in the Large Catechism as an example, and told her about praying the Psalms, two bits stood out:

It is an abbreviation and an endangering of Christian prayer if it revolves exclusively around the forgiveness of sins. There is such a thing as the confident leaving behind of sin for the sake of Christ. (50)

[I wish Pastor were there explaining that one. I wish I still had the freedom to ask.] All that fills my eyes right now is my own wretchedness. I know my sin. I know the sin of another that has been thrust upon me. My thoughts have been filled with such, as would my prayers if I could find the words. And yet I think that this means not to look away from my sin to the Cross, but to look away from my sin to all the promises of God that I have because of the Cross.

Christ brought in himself the sacrifice of God for us and our Sacrifice for God. For us there remains only the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving in prayers, hymns, and in a life lived according to God's commands (Psalms 15 and 50).

I am sure to be wrong, but it seems to me that what this actually says is that not only was Christ an offering to God on our behalf, but that He is, His passion and death are, our offering to God. Were this the case, what a magnificent offering I have!

But when I think upon that which I have left...that sacrifice of prayers and thanksgiving and a life lived according to His commands...oh, what a poor offering have I right now...a true paucity for the One who saved me.

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Tomorrow I have a test that could make me very ill. Of course, I will be alone, four hours of waiting and wondering. Now, if it makes me ill, then I have an answer. If it does not, then the constant nausea remains a mystery. For which should I hope? I am approaching the 50 lb mark. While I have at least another 30 to go before someone could be concerned about me drying up and blowing away, this really shouldn't be happening.