Maybe I just can't. . . . .

Many thoughts on my mind today, as I'm supposed to be writing an article for my school's "spiritual" newsletter about my own faith journey. But if anything, I'm more confused in my own faith journey than ever. I just heard a speaker here on campus talk about "walking away from your sin, leaving it behind, becoming everything that God created you to be." I sat during that talk feeling like I ought to be having more and more guilt, as if that would be a proper ambition to change me. But the thing is, all my life, guilt has been the primary motivation to change, to become more holy, to follow God and serve him more. To talk about sin and rebellion and similar such things, without a deeper philosophical search into the root of those things, that only is treating the symptoms rather than the disease.
Sure, I'm a stubborn, tough chick. Don't mess with me, of course. I know that God desires for me to be holy, bla bla bla, all those things. . . . . . .but what REALLY is God after? Is he only wanting for me to have right behavior, to stop doing things that are rebellious and selfish, or is he after something so much deeper? I can't just berate myself until I change, so that God will be more pleased with me. I have to start with the mindset that God is already pleased with me, but yet there is the problem that I run from him often, willingly or unwillingly. I don't believe that this life is about attaining a perfect balance of behavior, thoughts, actions, etc. I think it's about something so much more. A journey, of discovering who I am (not who others think I am), who God is (not who others tell me He is like, but who he TRULY is), and not being afraid to ask questions. Who was it, Plato, that said: "Know thyself." And something that has been on my mind lately is what Pascal wrote about so much: "A man must know his wretchedness and also his glory in order to know the grace that God has bestowed upon him." If we as humans are too caught up in our glory, then we become arrogant; if we are too obsessed with our fallenness and wretchedness, then we become self-deprecating and depressed. We must know that each human is in essence a blatant paradox.
I am often too insecure to truly love or be loved, but yet I "long for love with every fiber of my being"; I too afraid of criticism to write, but yet something within my cries out for expression and truth and authenticity; I am too busy to truly connect with others, but yet there is a loneliness that is inherently within me that drives me to seek community; I don't know how to seek God with all of my paradoxes of faith and reason, but yet I long for him with a desire that is above and beyond anything my emotion or my intellect could ever explain; I love to be with people, but yet I long to be alone and think and search; I want to have time alone, but yet, when I do, I grow endlessly restless; I want to find truth, but yet every time that I think I have found it, it seems to elude me again. I am an enigma, a paradox, a mystery to myself and my fellow humans.
I am a sojourner, unwilling to accept regular answers and explanations, always searching and questioning for something so much deeper. All I can say, in the midst of this really inarticulate piece of expression, is that I have not arrived. I will never actually "arrive" at perfect truth and perfect knowledge and perfect wisdom. I am always searching, always falling short, sometimes seeing God, sometimes wondering if he's even there. . . . .but if anything, I know that I can be honest with God and with myself. . . . . .can I be honest with you, whoever dares to read this?