January 3, 2014

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    It's 2014. Isn't that crazy?  It's been a month since my last post.  I'm sorry.  I've been to Ireland over the New Year.  I'll talk about it later, but I need to talk about something else first.

    ...

    I have struggled mightily with putting God first these last few weeks.  My attention, consciously and unconsciously, has very much been on finding someone special to live life with.  When the Bible says, "the two will become one flesh," it means that.  The tearing apart of that union still resonates in my being.  The emptiness and the pain are things that I have to fight against on an almost daily basis.  Part of it is the loneliness, the absence of that other half.  Part of it is the confidence that the half that I have left is desirable, loveable, and important.

    I have struggled with the latter more so.  I usually can find some way to occupy my time whether it be through friends, hobbies, or entertainment.  Loneliness is something that attacks quickly out of the shadows then retreats.  The confidence is more ... overwhelming.  Things that have happened, things that have been said... made me believe that the things I was confident in were not reality.  I've wondered about how warm and loving my family is to people outside of it.  I've wondered about how warm and valuable I am.  I've wondered about whether how I conduct myself really is worth anything.  I'm usually good at analogies, but the best I can come up with on the spot is like...someone telling you that the toothpaste you've been using all your life is actually feces.  It never tasted like that to you before; it never smelt like that before.  But, the more it is repeated, the more the perceived reaction is negative toward it, and the more you start to believe it yourself.  The thing that you once thought was good and helpful becomes disgusting and vile.  The bottom line is: it would be very hard to want to brush your teeth with "feces" ever again, so you just stop.  It's not until you remove the lies, remove the reactions, remove the confusion that things seem right again.

    I went to Ireland with my grandparents, my parents, and my sister.  The random strangers from all over the globe that we traveled on tour loved my family.  I got compliments about every single one.  I was in the hotel bar at 3 AM on New Year's Day after having come in from downtown Dublin, and some members of our tour were still there.  They didn't talk to me about the trip; they talked about my how much they loved my family.  They talked about how much they enjoyed getting to know us.  We shared our emails the first part of the trip, and I've already received two emails from people expressing how much they enjoyed getting to know me over the trip.  Random people...

    The pain and sorrow of not having a significant other with me traveling was intense.  The frustration of making memories in a foreign country without that special someone was tangible.  But, God used that trip to rebuild my confidence in my faith, my family, and the way I do life.  He reminded me that He has resources that I knew nothing about, that He knows my wants and desires more fully than I do.  He loves me, and I needed to be reminded that that's enough sometimes.

    In my quiet time this morning, I was reading 2 Corinthians 4: 10, which says "Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies."  I guess I could feel that I was suffering.  I could feel an absence, but I couldn't really put it on anything.  I couldn't really ground it in my mind.  Not that being single on a trip is anything compared to what Christ went through, but I was reminded that He felt loneliness.  He struggled with how things were going, and how things were happening.  He may have doubted whether what He'd done leading up to the Cross was right.  To be able to rest my suffering on Christ, to ground it in His experience has really made a difference.   Afterwards, God raised Him up.  God restored Him.  God's divine will and resources were made manifest in the Resurrection, and to know that...being where I've been, has made 2014 seem a much brighter place.

    ...

     

    Peace