making up for lost time.

for some reason i didn't write the entire month of august. i'm losing steam here. i can't write. it's something to do with ADD, something to do with lack of inspiration, and a lot to do with exhaustion. just this general, "i don't have it in me today." and "today" has been a lot of days.

i remember once when i was younger, probably around ninth grade, i was singing at church and i fell in love with my own voice. in an instant, though, i was appalled by my pride and prayed God would take the rhythm and the notes away from me, that i might not harbor any self-admiration in my bones. i don't mean to sound all mythical (is that the word i'm looking for?), but the reason i remember that day so well, is because since then, i don't remember a single instant when i felt my voice was lovely.

i'm kinda there now, but with writing. okay, so i can put together a sentence. i'm not saying i'm incapable of writing well, but i am saying i don't feel it. and feeling it is really important. in this case, i never prayed God would take away my ability. in fact, now i don't feel like i ever had the ability, just a stroke of luck every once in awhile. so it's not a commonality in that God must have robbed me of this gift, rather that the feeling is similar. something i once felt i performed well, i now feel like i'm only average.

i've never been able to love myself. i don't completely hate myself. i like my hair sometimes. i like my sense of style sometimes. i have certain qualities that are decent...like i'm nice and easy to be around. but i can't say a positive thing about who i am or how i look without the voices in my head striking up their own conversation about why that particular thing is not actually my strength, and why my hair isn't even a for-sure, because i have bad hair days a lot, and it's frizzy if i don't tame it.

i ache. that's the only way i can say it. i ache all over inside. that thing, my "heart," (i've been told exists somewhere other than my chest cavity), it pounds with exhaustion, because it's incapable of being healed. and since i've only been through one major trauma in my life, and most of these "feelings" have been in existence long before my dad died, i can't exactly pinpoint this thing from which my heart even needs healing. counseling seems pointless. i've tried it, and it wasn't like the movies. no major breakthroughs. but i feel like that's because there's nothing in there. there's nothing to be discovered, except that i'm just dark and burdened for no good reason.

i've tried anti-depressants, and they help in some ways, but mostly they just kind of confuse me. it's like, i still think and feel all the same things i used to feel, just without the ache. i don't like myself anymore than i did. i don't feel anymore motivated or self-assured. i don't feel like i'm good at anything or gifted in any way; the main difference is just that i don't physically feel that thing inside me, inside my soul, banging around and hurting all the time.

so you wanna know the one conclusion i've developed? the thing that came to me in a split second that's kinda comforting and kinda not? i'm pretty sure that ache is a result of my separation from God. my separation resulting from my sinful nature, not specifically, because i did this and this and this, but generally, because i'm a human being and way back in the beginning of things, that connection was screwed up big time.

and yes. i know that through Christ i am again connected to my heavenly father. but i also know that part of salvation...nay...all of salvation is a result of faith, and thus, may not fix the internal discrepancy between accepting God, and being connected to God. if that makes an sense. which i'm pretty sure it doesn't. but i guess what i'm saying is that, i do have faith. i have loads of it. i trust completely that someday i will be reunited with God, because Christ is perfect and sacrificed his-everything that that bond may be reestablished. i also think, though, that while i believe all of the above with absolute resolve, i am still human, and for some reason, i'm hypersensitive to the loss. the loss of a daily garden romp with the King. the loss of complete obedience. the loss of innocence, and especially the loss of pure, unheeded lightheartedness.

burdened is an incredibly descriptive word for what i feel. yes, i have been saved. thank Jesus i have been saved and i never have to go back to hopelessness. but as long as i'm on this broken, severed, departed earth, how can i ever feel anything but a dreadful burden that stems from a deep, innate longing for Home?

these are rhetorical questions, of course. things i've been asking myself since i was very young, and things that i doubt will ever disappear in this lifetime. i do thank God, endlessly, for this fascinating hope he's instilled in this cavern. someone so burdened, so lost, so pained, and so broken (me), can still have such a solid, relentless, impenetrable belief in the glorious Thing to come, that is Eternity with him. perhaps that steadfast hope is my gift.

the end.