Chasing God Part I

     I've been chasing God every since I realized He existed.  That is, pretty much since the words  "seek ye first the kingdom of Heaven" jumped out at me from the pages of the Bible.  I was a very young person struggling to understand what direction my life should take.  This, I determined, would be the main focus I would strive for in the years that were to come.
    But try as I might, the more I chased after him, the farther he seemed to retreat.  Now, I never expected to catch him, but I hoped he might slow down enough for me to at least walk beside him.  For years, I struggled with a host of problems - - depression, sexual sin, bulimia, theological questions that seemed beyond my ability to deal with and sent my faith into a tailspin, and most recently, multiple bouts of cancer.  I often wondered where God was at in all my problems and why I couldn't feel his presence.  Most of the time I couldn't pray and felt total emptiness.  Forget about the times I had felt joy as a baby Christian.  Those where the times I enjoyed being at church and experienced the presence of the Lord in prayer, to the point where I felt like an electric current was running through my body.
     Many times during all this, I literally "tied a knot at the end of my rope and hung on."  I told myself, "What else can I do?"  I didn't want to throw in the towel and take the attitude that he didn't exist, or if he did he didn't care about me.  Somewhere, somehow, I knew he would answer if I just held on long enough.