"...the devil is hot on my face again..."

This whole week has definitely been "off". I've had as little of sleep as I've had since I moved to Washington, and my days have been usually marked with this feeling that the world around me isn't spinning the way it should...or something. I think we've already decided that I as a writer and you as a reader that I am horrible with imagery.

I don't think there is any coincidence in how I've had such a hard time getting my heart in a place to talk to God and me feeling so separated from what I would consider a happier existence. God brings me to a place where I can feel meaningful in Him and see less reasoning to find meaning in what the world gives me. But when I drift from talking to Him, the world becomes a much prettier and worthwhile enterprise than it really seems. I think the devil does his work there.

I heard the best analogy for my struggle this week and the one who told me about it had no idea how much it spoke to me when she said it. Summarizing her badly, she said that the world is like this huge circus, being held under a beautiful sky. To seek God is to look to the sky, but the circus is always trying to get you hooked with whatever it can bring to tie your eyes away from the sky. That analogy speaks almost to the letter of how I've felt lately. The world has been throwing spectacle after spectacle in front of me, trying to bring me in more and more. I've been so strong, but lately the devil has been winning, and I see the effects of it on my heart. It takes all I have lately to just pry my eyes for a moment off the circus and into the sky.

This is where my spiritual immaturity rears its head. What do I do? How can I pray for God to speak to me clearly when I can't even focus enough to clearly ask for that? Where is the place I can go to in my soul that allows me to reach God the way I had been before?

I honestly don't know those answers... but I'll keep looking upward in case the answers have been trying to be find me already.