Certainty and healing

Sometimes I wish I could come back to certainty. It's not gone, but I've lost confidence that I can capture it. This isn't necessarily bad and it's not certain either. But there was a time when in my relational emphasis of knowing Christ I translated Christianity into a formula. No baggage that I can recall, no devilish motives, but A+B=Christian. Ironically I would have gone to the mat in defending my ideal that there were no formulas to God, but that's part of life. We're always looking for the script, the steps, the signs, the means, the avenue to success. For the charismatic this is running to prophets and for the Evangelical it is reading the Bible like a maintenance manual. This is probably a good trait, generally. The object is to focus in on inadequacies of "A" or "B" and pump them up. But sometimes those with the strongest faith die horrific deaths and those with the most deprived, demonic expressions of being live abundantly. And yes, sometimes it seems that A+B=life to the full.

I raise this little paragraph of paradox because today I wondered how much of our experience is psychological and how much spiritual? Where does physical come into play? Are these categories a continuum of a common one? Today, I found my psyche being impacted by an event that happened 19 years ago. I've been melancholy and blue, not all of which fits nicely into this event. But today is the anniversary of the death of my mom. And I find on this anniversary, and her birthday, points where my being is impacted without my will. I often forget the calendar, holidays and birthdays many times become disconnected from my life, but even with this distance, the emotion consumes and I have an ah-ha that it's that season again.

Is the message of Christ that we will revert to a cleaner, more innocent time in our lives and from there live out healthy lives? Does he really promise that those abused will be unimpacted by that trauma in knowing him? What if life is unrepairable and the new creation makes use of the chaos and crap? As unknown, mystery, possibility, and yes uncertainty have taken more prominence in my life, I wonder if faith requires an object of belief. A+B=C. I wonder and in that wanderment I meet people who are certain of their healing, and I meet myself, fairly uncertain of it.