Better Today

So I am better today because I have to be. I have 50 pages to write in the next three or four days.

I am looking forward to having actual days off for the last couple of months of summer. I am looking forward to closing on our house, knowing whether or not I am in the Ph.D. program, knowing whether or not I have an assistantship, and knowing that things are looking up. I am optimistic today, which is something that I am usually not. For me, my new life begins when I want it to.

For a while, maybe even before lent, maybe since I quit at Grace,I haven’t been plugged in with God, or that higher power that is out there: Nature, God, or whatever you call [Them]. If you know me, you know that the constant struggle of my life is one of belief, of faith, of spiritual security. It is so refreshing to talk to people who “know.” I don’t. I feel, but I don’t know. Soemtimes. I look at other faiths and I see things, tenets, in their belief systems that make so much sense. I borrow from them, but then I feel guilt because it seems like I have been whoring around on my God. I feel a bit like Gomer, maybe. I feel like all I need to do is read more, pray more, worship more, and I will be able to wrap my faith up in the neat little package that I see other people carrying around with them. Sometimes I wish the FCS would sell little syringes filled with Jesus Juice, so I could just give myself a daily injection and not have to worry abotu it. It would be easier. But I struggle, almost constantly with our world, my place in it, and my responses to it.

I will tell you the truth. I have been considering buying a Neapolitan Mastiff, a two to three thousand dollar dog. When I got home last night, my mail was on the table. I had received a Compassion International Magazine, and as I looked through the pictures, I thought what the FUCK is wrong with my perspective? There are some thousands of children dying daily because they don’t have food, or their parents have passed their HIV status on down the line, and I, I, I, I am considering spending not just hundreds, but thousands, of dollars on a dog. WHAT THE FUCK AM I THINKING? I will tell you. I am thinking about ME!

I am thinking along with the Psalmist: “Yet, I am a worm and not a man. I am scorned by humanity and despised by people.” I am a worm because my priorities are so misplaced. On the note of Psalm 22, I was talking with a friend of mine at work about the movie The Passion of the Christ. He said what bothered him was that 45 minutes of the movie showed “the guy that I try to live like every minute of every day” being beaten and tortured. He said it really messed with him because that isn’t the Jesus he is trying to live like, he is trying to live like the Jesus that the movie didn’t show, the one who quoted Psalm 22, and taught others how to incorporate its sentiments into their lives. The beaten Jesus isn’t the one we needed to see, we needed to see whatever happened the rest of the 72 hours of the Passion.

I feel like a worm for being so self-absorbed. I was talking to a friend this morning and she told me to quit burying my feelings. I have to. I am the person that people talk to, not the person who does the talking.

I want my new life to start now.