Even ground

     Some days feel like it is all you can do to eat regular meals and remember to drink water and, oh, yeah, perhaps go to sleep at the end of it all.  And then somedays you remember how to breathe. Today was one of those days. Despite being an early morning, the majority of my day concluded early and I was released into a pleasant afternoon filled with casual social encounters and some quite time by myself. After my post from yesterday and my day of stillness today, I feel "reset."  Well, not quite. "Reset" implies that I have returned to ground zero and everything is normal which, of course, it never has been. Rather, it has been one of those days where life seems manageable and, contrary to yesterday's summary of my general apathetic state lately, today was a reminder that my life is not my own. To remind us of this fact, God sometimes bats at us with a giant paw to knock us off our self-created pedestals and out of our ruts of self-pity and self-absorption. Other times, like today, He quietly clears His throat in the library corner and points demurly to His latest handiwork. And you just smile. Because you know. And you thank Him for His graciousness and for His extreme generosity in letting you in on the process.

"Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received grace, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth commending ourselves to very man's conscience in the sight of God...For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bondservants for Jesus' sake." 2 Corinthians 4:1-3, 5
 

     As much as i would like it to be, my academic career or reputation is of no importance if I am not following God and His plan for my life. As much as I would love to be a million things and often (ashamedly) see my self as the bright and shining figurehead of Christianity's biggest breakthrough of the last 100 years, I know that God has many other things planned for me and that the limelight would be a gift too easy to squander for a heart as addicted to attention as mine is. It is a wonder He bothers to use us at all.

 

But He does.  What a gift!

Depletion

      Lately, I found myself devoid of will and inspiration, filled, rather, with an alarming sense of apathy. I realized today that my desire to accomplish the goals and tasks set before me has completely overshadowed the love I once had for my work, whatever it might be. I don't really care about school anymore and am struggling to find a reason to excel in my assignments. I feel my mind, too, slipping into a watery stupor where my thoughts slosh about like dirty seawater. I don't bother to examine them or think critically about the information and stimulus I am receiving. I am a sponge that is too tired to be wrung out.

                                         Why have I ceased to care?


      I heard a friend described as a person of great drive today. I thought drive was something I possessed as well, but it seems to be gone now.  Funny, I think God is revealing more and more how much I must come to depend on Him and not myself. I once thought that my drive, my determination, and my fierce vision for the future would last forever and would be something I could always really upon. Clearly, I was mistaken. It is a depressing and disheartening thing for a person who claims to feel such passion to find apathy taking up residence. I have been trying to find the source of this malaise, and the only thing that holds water is the increasingly-less-recent poss of my best friend. I truly loved this person but never quite realized it until they had passed on. At least, I think this is love. I am not really sure what love means anymore. But I do know that there has been only one person in this entire world to ever make me feel equally safe and vulnerable. My trust was implicit, although the particulars were often hard to express. With their loss, my mind and heart raced to recovery, only to find that their memory was and will ever be as indelible as a scar. It aggravates me that this grey season in life has been caused by a single individual. I don't like to need people that much even though that is the lesson I have been trying to learn for the past four years.  I am awfully good at shoving people away when I need them most. I just want them to try harder. "No, you come to me. I will never come to you even if I want to."
       In the end, I will find my desire to live again. That must sound like I wish to end my life here and now. Nothing could be farther from my mind. Try as I might, I never could hate myself enough to wish harm upon myself and frankly, I am just too scared and lazy to ever try. Rather, what I fear is living a purposeless and uninspired life where I am locked in a personal, self-created and self-sustained hell of endless tasks that I accomplish with speed and efficiency to the exclusion of all else. College has made me a homework machine and I object.  I trust that God will sustain me no matter my mood or spiritual state. "For we have this treasure in earthen vessels so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves" (2 Corinthians 4:7).