I was right about the booklet. I did it wrong.  And I messed up otherwise.  I tried the other project and sent it off for review, but I have little hope that I was able to accomplish the goal.  What I think is wrong.  I don't even see it so.  I don't mind trying again until I get things right, but I struggle with feeling like such an overwhelming failure with work and with communicating and with faith.

Why, oh why, am I such a colossal failure at asking questions?  Why does it seem that I am speaking in another language, bumbling things so badly so as never to approach that which I long to understand?  Worse still is that I am utterly confused since it seems to me that I am laying out the matter so plainly.  Yet the response I get is either utter silence or a long answer that ignores the very heart of what I am asking and that confuses me further.

I finished Walther's sixth evening lecture.  He writes and quotes Luther as if both men were reading my mind...

Like two hostile forces,  Law and Gospel sometimes clash with each other in a person';s conscience.  The Gospel says to him:  You have been received into God's grace."  The Law says to him:  "Do not believe it; for look at your past life.  How many and grievous are your sins!  Examine the thoughts and desires that you have harbored in your mind"  On an occasion like this it is difficult to divide Law and Gospel.  When this happens to a person, he must say to the Law:  "Away with you!  Your demands have all been fully met, and you have nothing to demand of me.  There is One who has paid my debt."  This difficulty does not occur to a person dead in his trespasses and sins; he is soon through with the Law.  But the difficulty is quite real to a person who has been converted.  He may run to the opposite extreme and come nigh to despair. (47)

...

Luther continues:  "By tests like those cited the hearts of men are often led astray, so that they cannot think of anything except of what they have done and should ahve don; likewise, of what God commands and forbids.  While keeping their minds on these things, they forget all that Christ has done and God has promised to do through Christ.  (48).

...

I wish to cite Luther once more.  He writes (St. L. Ed. IX, 161):  "In your tribulations you will become aware the Gospel is a rare guest in men's consciences, while the Law is their daily and familiar companion.  For man has by nature the knowledge of the Law."  Unless a person learns this by experience, he will not learn it at all.  If you are Christians, you will admit that you are far oftener troubled and worried than comforted.  When you feel the comfort of the Gospel in your heart, that is a glimpse of the light that may come to you on a certain day; but then several days may pass when you will not catch that glimpse again.   (49)

How well I understand such right now...having come nigh unto despair.  The past and whether or not it was my sin, even in a small part, haunts me.  Forgiveness and what that means, what it looks like, what I am to do and whether or not I am, in actuality, an unrepentant sinner troubles me deeply.  The present and knowing that Pastor is right and yet wanting to reject what he said with my whole being crushes me.  I had such a fragile truce with the past and how it could be good; one sentence and Pastor shattered that irrevocably.

While I do take a measure of comfort in having my own heart, my own anguish, spread across the pages of a book written more than a century before quoting a man half a millennium before and am, thus, not alone, I am terrified that even Luther struggled as I am right now.  If he, the learned Christian he was, struggled, what hope have I, one of those ignorant folk he wrote so often about in the Large Catechism?

There have been times when I [Luther] imagined I understood it [how to properly divide Law and Gospel] because during so long a time I had written a great deal about it; but believe me, when I come to ap inch, I perceive that I have widely missed the mark.(47)

I read and re-read the lecture thinking since this is so great a problem, one which causes such abject despair, there would be some wise counsel.  Perhaps I am blind, but I found none...not really.

Always keep this reflection present:  "For such poor sinners as I am  the Gospel--the sweet Gospel-- has been provided.  I have forgiveness of sins through Christ."  (49)

True, this is key.  This is the answer.  BUT...across pages and pages Walther (and Luther) show how, in such times, the Christian cannot remember the sweetness of the Gospel.  How, then, could the answer be to "keep this reflection present"?

What do I do if I cannot remember?  What do I do if I alienate the person who could remember for me?