God, It's Me, Chana

You're making me crawl and I hate it. You made the snake crawl, on its belly, through the dust. (And then it eats the dust, which is kind of like it is eating man, which demonstrates its victory in making man fall since man is made of dust; I touched on that point somewhere else. But anyway, that's tangential.) The point of this is: you're making me crawl, abject, making me watch how nothing comes right and how I betray You without trying to and how goddamned hard it is to watch everyone think I'm a fundamentalist backwater kid. What is this; will your humiliation process humble me? Is it going to help me somehow? You already tore my pride to shreds; why the need to go further with this? How far will the experiment go? And who the hell will I be when you're done?

Only You could know how much I value that people respect my intelligence and only You could devise so cruel a punishment as to let me watch people think I'm a total idiot, brainwashed and stupid, in order to show me that truly nothing matters- nothing matters but knowledge of God.

כב כֹּה אָמַר יְהוָה, אַל-יִתְהַלֵּל חָכָם בְּחָכְמָתוֹ, וְאַל-יִתְהַלֵּל הַגִּבּוֹר, בִּגְבוּרָתוֹ; אַל-יִתְהַלֵּל עָשִׁיר, בְּעָשְׁרוֹ. 22 Thus saith the LORD: Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches;

כג כִּי אִם-בְּזֹאת יִתְהַלֵּל הַמִּתְהַלֵּל, הַשְׂכֵּל וְיָדֹעַ אוֹתִי--כִּי אֲנִי יְהוָה, עֹשֶׂה חֶסֶד מִשְׁפָּט וּצְדָקָה בָּאָרֶץ: כִּי-בְאֵלֶּה חָפַצְתִּי, נְאֻם-יְהוָה. {ס} 23 But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth, and knoweth Me, that I am the LORD who exercise mercy, justice, and righteousness, in the earth; for in these things I delight, saith the LORD. {S}

~Jeremiah 9: 22-23

I never understood these verses before. I thought I did but I didn't. But you're making me understand them, every single day, in every way possible. And God, if it hurts me so much to have comparatively little- people who don't know you- think I'm nothing, how must it have hurt Jeremiah to watch his own people cast him away? How must it hurt you to watch your people deny You? I'm angry with you; I freely acknowledge that...but I see what you are doing. I do. None of it ought to matter to me and one day it won't...but right now I'm still raw from everything else. I watch everything I try to be and accomplish fall apart and wonder who I'll be when you've taken everything away. What will I have left? Nothing, of course- nothing except You. And You know that. It's cruel, it's sick, and it's also brilliant. You've given me everything and nothing- You play the Joker's hand.