i have been avoiding writing. What is there to say that hasn't been said before? This is why i don't journal anymore, why i don't go to church, because i am tired of pursuing God without reciprocation. i'm tired of doubting God, of being mad at Him for not keeping His promises, for feeling guilty because i'm mad at Him, because i am weak, because i am not doing enough to serve Him. i am exhausted.
i also think that i no longer believe in corporate worship as it largely exists in the U.S. today. In Acts and Roman it seems to me that the Spirit moves most powerfully in homes, not in a church building. Why should we spend so much on a building, on having a fake garden on stage, on the church workers, when we could meet in homes, at parks, and send all of that money to people who desperately need it for food, housing, clothing, health care? It feels like a vicious cycle when so few serve and are forced to do all the work. But i don't know how to find people who want to worship in the same way i do, who feel called to serve, to change the looming fate of a nation. Maybe it's too late, maybe Jesus' return is right around the corner, but i still struggle to be the optimist and fight against the pessimism that i am flooded with when i attend a worship service where so few sing and the sermon is about jokes instead of God's truth.
Quitting college has been such a relief for me. i never wanted to attend Mesa State, i never felt like i fit in there, that it was the right place, but i haven't known what else to do, where else to go. It kills me that i cannot support myself and that my life seems to be going nowhere. But as much as i appreciate my new freedom my loneliness has only become more pronounced. At school i had a few classmates that i connected with, and i would talk to them, see them three times a week. Right after i quit classes i started talking to RobG more, as i relieve him as MCO, but he complains a lot, and we have little in common. My granparents have finally been moved into assisted living (praise God) and i have an empty house with a cat that only barely tolerates me. So i am not paying my own way, i'm in so much debt from going to a school that was a waste of time, i have no friends, and now i'm thinking about moving cross country and going deeper into debt?
It's scary, to feel like God wants me to go to Florida on a whim, on faith, when at the same time i feel like he hasn't been providing for me. i've been forced to live off the charity of others, which is very humbling and annoying. All i've wanted to do is work towards and fight for my future, but the way is shut. i feel like i'm caged. But now there's the possibility of me moving towards something, and i have no doubt that i would excel at it, but is that what God wants for me? It's intimidating. And right now i would give up all my dreams in pursuit of the one that i have wanted longest of all.
My biological clock has been ticking. That sounds so stupid, but i knew when i was three that i wanted to be a mother and throughout my entire childhood all of my play was geared towards marriage and starting a family, whether i was playing with Barbies, Legos, Star Trek figurines, or Hot Wheels. i thought that my life would be set once i turned eighteen, that i would meet the boy of my dreams and we would get married and life would be perfect. Yes, eighteen was the magic number to me, the magic age, but here i am, twenty-five, and i've never even been on a date, or been kissed, had a chance to fall in love. i've always felt somehow guilty for it, to want this--love, marriage, pregnancy, children--so very much, to read the pregnancy books that were sprinkled throughout the house, to want every movie/show to have a romance with a happy ending. i have tried to hide it, tried to ignore it, but i feel it with all that i am. Even more than i want to make films, write books, change the world, i want this.
i know it stems from the fact that i have always felt that i could never do anything to make my father proud of me, because what i want to achieve he doesn't understand, and also because i am not good enough at the things he cares about. i know that it is because my Mom spent ten years praying for another baby, because she homeschooled me and brought me up in the Word. i know that i am rebeling against the feminists in the family, to not want to become a matriarch, to want nothing more than a good man who will take care of me, to submit to. And i also know that letting most guys know that you want to get married and start a family right away scares them away immediately, but i've never even had the chance to do that. The guys i have expressed interest in either ignored me, pushed me away, or were unavailable. No one has ever asked me on a date, and i don't believe in changing myself to make myself more appealing, flirting or dressing provacatively. But i wonder why i am always alone, rejected by peers, and outsider. Like Meredith on Thanksgiving on Grey's Anatomy, i feel as if my presence at a party is a downer, is not welcome exactly not welcome necessarily, but as if things are better without me and my baggage.
When i was eighteen i felt that having a family right away was necessarily something that had to happen for me immediately, that i would enjoy living as a married couple for a while, working towards a career for a little while maybe, and seeing the world with my husband. But it has been seven years now, and i still haven't found a book or screenplay to write, i still can't support myself (let alone a child), i still haven't met my husband, and for all my efforts i feel farther away from God than ever. i do not mind so much about not dating, because i have always known that i am not the shopping around type; i want to meet my imzadi and i want to spend the rest of my life with him, with that one man. And right now (in particular) i am glad that i'm not dating because i think i would find it very hard to remain sexually pure. It's like Elizabeth says in Dead Man's Chest: "I'm so ready to be married."
Twenty-five years of virginity is no easy thing, especially when you feel like you're the only one in the universe who's saving yourself, who's waiting for marriage, and certain coworkers think such a thing is unnatural, is freakish. i don't know how to not believe what i do, but it's not easy being alone, especially when i feel like i'm only half a person, incomplete. To me, it seems the most important thing in life (after serving God) is marriage, to fill the earth and subdue it, but what is left to subdue on this planet? And no matter how advanced our science has become we can only fill the earth when a man's dna interacts with a woman's.
i hate sounding like a depressed whiner drama queen. But how could i honestly wish to stop feeling things so deeply, when they are the very propensities that make me me? My empathy is what i hope to save, my anger and despair to destroy. But i don't know how to live my life alone, to live my life at all. i have always known that a am nothing without God, that i will certainly fail if i try to do anything in my own power. i cannot be an astronaut, or a pirate, or a rebel fighter, but those are the things that inspire me, to explore, to fight for what is right against all odds, to die for what you believe in if need be. i am so much smaller as an individual in comparison to the hope and promise that God has given me. It's hard to reconcile the dark and hope that i am overwhelmed with at the same time, but they are as surely as I Am.
i don't feel worthy of God's love, the faith that He has displayed in me. Sometimes i wish i could turn my back on Him, the pain, on my life. But if like is devoid of hope, devoid of Him, then how much worse would death be, an eternity without Him? i cannot fathom the boundless nature of the universe, how God always was and is and will be, how my soul is just as deathless. i do not fear death, neither do i want it, it does not hold sway over me. But the dark... i don't know how to get free of it. i don't know if i'm supposed to. i don't think i can. i feel helpless, and my hope is in God. He seems to believe that i can get through this, i'm not so sure.
i don't know how to be normal, or act like the world is fine. Nothing is fine. The world is sinful, war feels safer than peace, because peace would mean the end to so many freedoms. Nothing makes sense. i don't know how to tell anyone about God when i don't understand what He's doing myself and when it is deemed offensive by the media that i am surrounded with. Christianity, the denial of self, purity, are foreign concepts to the world. i try to stand apart, but it's unbelievably hard and painful. More than anything, i cannot fake normalcy anymore, i cannot play that game, but i don't know how to be true to God anymore, either. i feel as if i am at the end of a battle where all hope is lost and i cannot surrender but i cannot find the strength to fight, either.
It's hard for me to express this without sounding depressed or holier than thou. i'm not perfect, i'm sinful, and i fight against my sin nature while simultaneously wanting to give in to it. More than anything, i want to always follow God's perfect will, but i don't know if i'm strong enough... No, i know i'm not strong enough. i pray for strength, i pray for deliverance, but i don't know what will happen. Sometimes i wonder if i've got a chemical imbalance in my head, but i know that the spiritual forces i sometimes sense are really there, fighting over this nation's future, the world. i don't care if i don't play a big part in it so much as i care about doing God's will. If he would let me then i think i would be content to be a nameless individual with a husband and family, but somehow i've always known that it wasn't to be. i wish i were wrong, i hope that i can still have those things, but it's up to Him. And that makes me sad and hopeful at the same time.
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