Hurts

My stomach hurts.  I’m probably just hungry, but this can’t be just hunger.  I want to punch a wall right now and I don’t even now why.  I’m about to get five weeks off, totally free to do just about whatever I feel like doing, so why am I not thrilled?  

Why do I consistently find reasons to grieve myself?  My life is good.  I have no reason to complain.  I just want what was and will never be again.  I feel like I’m standing on top of a mountain looking ahead at all that life has for me, but all I want to do is climb back down.  Can’t we just rewind to four months ago and pause?  Why can’t things be different?  Why do I always wish things were different?  I know I just need to pick myself up and quit being idyllic.  For goodness’ sake, I pride myself in being a realist.  

For a while there, I thought everyone was changing, acting differently.  Now I’m realizing that it might just be me.  And so I fall farther and farther.  I feel like I’m at the end of my rope half the time, but I’m not stressed, I’m not scared, I’m not sick, I’m not anything.  I’ll be okay.  I’ll be fine.  I just need some time.

I guess I’ll figure things out in time.  God hasn’t left me, but it kind of feels that way sometimes.   I just need some purpose.  

I need to stop being my own biggest critic.  I’m not my own worst enemy, there are much worse out there.  I hope this isn’t normal, because I wouldn’t wish this feeling on anybody.  

What happened to peace of mind?  Needless to say, it’s out the window in the meantime.  It hurts tonight.

Still

It is curious to me that God never gives up.  I have recently found myself in various states that warrant a resignation from duty on His part.  There have been more than enough times that I have slapped away His healing hand and shouted meaphorical obsenities at his offerings of deliverance.  I am utterly undeserving of His love, comfort, protection, peace, joy, forgiveness, and the list goes on.  Still, each time that I cry out in failure, pleeing for forgiveness for something that I will no doubt do again tomorrow, He hears me.  Not only does He hear me, but He forgives me.  When I rip down my own towers, He gently lifts me out of the wreckage, dusts me off, and carries me while I’m too weak to walk.  Though I have done little to deserve HIs love, and much to drive it away, still He loves me.  Still He leads me.  Still He sustains me.  How could I do anything but praise?

Ducks

It rained last night; rained hard.  It got colder too.  But it’s all good, I like the cold.  When everybody else is shivering and taking every opportunity they get to remind me just how cold it is and that they can’t wait for spring, I’m secretly smiling.  Dreary weather is my favorite.  I couldn’t possibly explain why.

Anyway, with the end of the semester rapidly approaching and everyone wondering how it’s already almost over, I can’t help but feel like time moves so much faster here.  Days feel like hours, hours like minutes.  That isn’t necessarily a good thing in my eyes.  Weeks fly by and once the weekend arrives I feel like I haven’t really done anything, like I’m just wandering along, going through the motions.  Four months ago, I had all my ducks in a row.  Now half my ducks are dead and the rest are running around, and it kind of feels like I’m sitting in the middle of it all just watching it happen.  I want to chase some of them, but at the same time, I think maybe I should let them go and see what the eggs have to hold.  I guess this is normal, but I feel like I’m just wasting tie until something amazing happens…

Lost and Found

I broke up with my girlfriend tonight.  We ended it.  We both knew it was coming, just not exactly when.  It just so happened to be tonight.  We tried it, but a long distance relationship is a near impossibility.  I didn’t expect an ending like this at the beginning, but I don’t regret any of it. 

It seems like I’ve known her forever.  I loved every minute of being with her, when we weren’t dating and when we were.  The worst part is that I actually love this girl.  If I hated her, if she ever annoyed me, or if there was something about her that I just couldn’t stand, I probably wouldn’t feel like crying my eyes out and running laps around my house at the same time.  What I’m feeling is almost unexplainable.  It hurts unlike just about anything I have ever felt in my life.  But, at the same time, I feel like a burden has been lifted from my shoulders.  I might have lost my girlfriend tonight, but I found a new best friend.

Update

Wow, it’s been a while since I posted here.  Life has been happening and I guess I just haven’t had the time or the will to write anything for the world to see.  College is growing on me, for sure.  It’s not that I didn’t like it before, it’s just that now I feel like this is becoming my home.  Last weekend on my way back up here, I didn’t feel sad to leave home like I usually do.   I guess that’s a good thing. 

Right now, I should be in class.  Oh, well.  Up til 1:00 last night and Government was about the last thing I needed this morning.  I really don’t know what to expect this weekend.  I’m excited, but a little hesitant about a few things.  I don’t want to get that, just that I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. 

Grades are still good.  I have more time to play my guitar now, too, and I’ve been trying to do some more writing.  That and learning covers comprises most of my free time activity. 

It was hard leaving and I still long for another year of high school occasionally.  I guess things just have to change sometimes, and this time there’s nothing I can do about it.

Believe

I went to a Bible study tonight.  It wasn’t particularly special in and of itself, but, during the worship time, as I stood unengaged and disconnected I was overcome by a powerful and unexplainable thought.  It was one of those moments that you “hear God speak.”  I realized , more often than not, I hope God will save the day instead of believing that he will.  That might seem like a small distinction to make, but it is huge in its implications. 

Here’s an analogy.  Let’s say there is an investor.  He hopes that a certain stock will go up, but he doesn’t know for sure, so he invests only what he can afford to lose and that’s it.  Now, let’s say that same investor knows that a certain stock will go up.  Does he invest cautiously?  No way.  He spends his life savings and then some to buy up as much of it as he can. 

I hear people all the time talking about how they wish they could give their whole selves to the kingdom of God.  I heard it tonight.  What’s holding them back?  Most people hope that God will come through, but really aren’t too sure one way or the other, and so they only give what they can afford to lose.  Here’s the thing:  God is real.  He does have a plan for your life.  He loves you.  He wants the best for you.  Give Him everything, He will come through.  Just believe.

“…faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1 (NIV)

Alive

My psych class was canceled today, and I had big plans for a nap after class.  But, after 30 minutes of walking to and from class (that’s not an exageration by the way) I’m really not tired any more…

Funny thing happened last night.  I had one of those rare “moments of clarity” around 3 AM.  It’s one of those things that just kind of sneaks up on you, totally unprovoked, and suddenly you catch a glimpse of the world as it is and how it should be.  Anyway, I wake up and my room is dark except for the moonlight shining through the slats in my blinds.  I catch a glimpse of the clock and it hits me:  I am alive.  That sounds crazy, I know.  But the simple realization that I was alive was suddenly extremely reassuring.  This is probably going to sound a little too “New Age” for some people, but it came to me in that moment, that every bad, inconvenient, or undesirable thing in life, short of death, is fleeting.  The fears and failures of the present moment are temporary, so there is no need to dwell on them. 

It seemed to me that I had been taking something so simple for granted for so long.  The very fact that I was alive and breathing meant that God was not done with me yet.  Until the day that we die, God is not done with us.  Each day is new, each moment is new.  Every minute that we still draw breath is filled with opportunities to be used by God.  Don’t waste the days in fear like I have for so long.  Ask God to show you what He wants you to do, then be willing to do it.  We are not wasting away until we allow ourselves to waste away.

“So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise.  Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days.  Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do.” Ephesians 5:15-17

Cold

My dorm is an ice-box.  66 degrees of perfection.  I absolutely love it.  Unfortunately in the midst of trying to find my classes and friends and everything else my heart fell in the ice-box, too.  I cracked my Bible today for the first time in I won’t tell you how long to 1 Corinthians 13.  It’s short but sweet.  Here’s the opener:

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”

I realized that I have been doing the right thing out of a sense of duty, not a sense of love.  Now is that necessarily a bad thing?  Maybe not.  But this passage seems to say that without love whatever good we do is worthless.  When we open our eyes to the fact that this world is temporary and there are lost and hurting people all around us and that our next breath isn’t even a guarantee, we can see that in the end, love is all we’ve got.  To borrow from Kansas, all we are is dust in the wind.  At the end of our lives, it won’t matter how many trophies we won, what kind of grades we earned, what kind of car we drove, how big of a house we lived in, or anything else.  Once you’re last breath is on it’s way out of your lungs, the only thing that’s going to matter is not going to be how you lived, but how you loved.  So, if you’re shivering your way through a loveless life, then please, for your own sake, take your heart out of the freezer and get it beating again.

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

Sunshine

or maybe, clouds.  Actually, no, definitely clouds.  But the real ones today, not the metaphorical kind.  Today was, metaphorically, sunny. 

I don’t know what happened yesterday to stir such a hurting in my soul, but something did and I’m glad it’s gone. Last night I had to pep talk myself for the first time in a very long time.  Lying in the comfort of my nice, cold dorm room, covers up to my neck, I had to remind myself over and over again of what Jesus said in John 16:33: 

“I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me.  Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

Today was a totally different day.  I was at peace; about everything.  Class was pretty standard this morning.  I got a lot done this afternoon.  I met my faculty mentor, who seems like a really great lady.  I met up with some of my old high school friends completely out of the blue and had dinner with them.  I still feel small, but it’s good to see that there are other people in the same boat as me, and far worse. 

God is real and big, but for some reason I forgot that.  Maybe I can’t prove it with science, but in the words of Switchfoot, “the shadow proves the sunshine.”

Small

Don’t get me wrong.  I like college.  I really do.  It’s just that, as of yet, I don’t know anyone.  It’s lonely up here.  I feel like a minnow in the ocean, just kind of swimming around trying to find where I belong.  Last month was probably the greatest time of my life, and served as a cap on the greatest summer so far.  Now, I feel like that’s all gone.  It’s a terrible, horrible, pit in your stomach kind of feeling.  It’s hopelessness, I guess.  I’m not used to that.  I’m always the easy going, “It’s all gonna work out” guy.  But this time, I feel like I’m alone.  Just me up here trying to figure things out.  I don’t know what’s going to happen, and to be quite honest, I’m scared. 

The worst part is, everything else is great.  My dorm is awesome, I have a nice, quiet roommate, I have some pretty sweet scholarships, I have a new car, but I still feel so… unexplainable.  I don’t want to sound ungrateful, because I’m not, I just feel so small and worthless here; like I’m just a number.  I miss my friends back home, and I’m worried I won’t be able to find friends here that can match up.  This may sound strange, but it almost feels like grief.  Things will work out, I know that, it just doesn’t feel like that now.