Another Message from God or just the Nyquil talking?

I've been battling a nasty cold this week. In an attempt to get back on my feet quickly, I've decided for once in my life to heed the advice of doctors and get lots of rest and drink plenty of fluids. Since Nyquil enables me to rest and is also technically a fluid, I've come to enjoy this shot of grossness in the past few days before I close my eyes in a serious attempt to snooze my sickness away.

Yesterday, while enjoying a 3 hour mid-day nap, I woke from my deep sleep somewhat startled when I realized a sentence was playing in my head like a broken record. It said, "To understand who I am, you must understand who I am not." Um....huh? I thought. As I slowly came to consciousness, I first focused in on the sentence to make sure I was hearing it right. It played again, and then again, and again. Over and over in my head I heard the words so softly, yet so clearly that I could not mistake them for anything else. The voice said, "To understand who I am, you must understand who I am not." Scrambling to decipher what I thought could be an esoteric message from God, I quickly tried to gain access to my limbic system where my dreams were held to see if I could drum up some clue from my memory as to what this random line could be in reference to. What was I dreaming I wondered that brought about this sentence?

While trying to access this mysterious area of my mind, the sentence came then again, "To understand who I am, you must understand who I am not." I quickly realized that whatever I was dreaming was lost in the darkness of my subconscious, never to be found and all I'd be left with was this cryptic sentence. "To understand who I am, you must understand who I am not."

And so, I'll be on the lookout in the days, weeks, and months that follow for any answer to this question juuuussst in case it was not my nyquil induced state that created this mysterious thought, but instead, my second message from our curious Creator.

I've briefly given it some thought since yesterday but I wasn't exactly fond of where my thoughts were leading me. I talked it out with my husband in a 3 minute one-sided conversation. It went as follows: "Pat, what is God not?" He sat there, looking at me in that way he does when he's thinking how he loves me but wonders how I come up with all these random questions. Without giving him the opportunity to reply. I launched into what God was to me in an attempt to maybe dodge the question.

I told him I thought I had a pretty good idea of what God was. At least I thought I did. God is Love. Unconditional Love. He is one part God, one part Jesus, one part Holy Spirit. "No?" I asked rhetorically. I asked the question not really expecting him to answer, but certain I wasn't satisfied with my own answer as well. Then that puzzling question bubbled up again and I asked another question, "Patrick, if God is all That then what isn't God?" He again didn't answer, assuming I'd launch into another conversation with myself while pretending to direct it to him. And then my brain sizzled a bit. I said, "What isn't God, Pat? I thought God was All? That God was Everything the Alpha and the Omega. The Beginning and the End. I thought that God was the First and the Last" And then I stopped almost scared of the place this conversation had brought me to: I reluctanly said, "Could God be both yin and yang? Good and Evil? If God made the devil could God be...AHHHHH." I shuddered. I'm not so sure I like where this is going. But then, I was quickly reminded of my promise to myself... I can not and will not fear this process. Whatever I find will be for the greatest good.

I'd love to hear what other people think about how a God of Everything would not fit the description of both good and evil? Could this be what the bible meant when it said that He made man in His image? A man, like God, with both evil tendencies and with the ability to Love?