Ambivalence

I love discovering words that are able to perfectly summarize my feelings in just a few letters. The other day I was explaining my mixed feelings on things to my sister and she identified it as ambivalence. What a perfect word. It means: “Having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone.”

Am I really allowed to have mixed feelings about something or someone? Am I allowed to hate someone and love him or her all at the same time? Am I allowed to be passionate but apathetic all at once? Am I allowed to feel rage while also feeling grace and mercy towards someone or something? Is it possible to feel deep sadness and brokenness while still feeling hope and joy? These days I am a gigantic mess of emotions. I go through almost every possible emotion almost every day. How confusing… yet relieving to know that there is a word that describes my condition. I am undecided as to whether or not this makes me totally insane or completely normal…

I struggle with some of the views and beliefs that are lived out in the organization that I’m temporarily a part of. There are some values that I wholeheartedly agree with and wish to exemplify more frequently in my own life. But there are other things that I wrestle with and that drive me absolutely insane. Is that okay? Does that make me a skeptic, a heretic or a rebellious sinner? Sometimes I worry that it does. Other times I feel reassured by the fact that I’m asking questions and I remind myself that it’s always better to filter things and maybe even resist integration rather than go along with everything like a lemming. I don’t ever want to be a lemming. I want to figure things out for myself rather than taking everything as the divinely inspired word of God coming from a person who I’m sure is very godly. I never want to stop asking questions because I never want to stop growing. I want to figure out what I believe because I’ve thought it through and I’ve put each belief to the test. I want to be firm and grounded in what I believe and I think that I can only get to that place through asking questions. I will never ever be a lemming.