Wow, I'm surprised you got this far considering the title. I'm going to test my luck and get going before I say something else offensive.
Or, potentially offensive. Or, offensive, but in a good way. Like the times that you want to be offended. No? That's never been the case for you? Well, here's a new concept then. Your life is a wreck. That should be a sigh of relief. Should be. Why isn't it? Or more importantly right now, perhaps, why should it be? Don't we want to get to a point where we can look at all of the things in our life, a perfect romantic relationship, a healthy body, seamless communication between family, a stable job that you always love where it always seems to be Friday and money overflowing out of your designer jeans? Well, yeah, we want to get that point, most likely. Here's the thing though- that will never happen. And deep down, we know it won't. We know that it impossible to have everything, and I mean everything, clicking in our lives. We will always want a little more romance. A little less stress. A few dollars more. Because THEN, ahhhh, then(!) we will be able to sit back in a recliner and let out the biggest metaphorical sigh of relief of our lives. Picture that sigh of relief. That's a funny request, but seriously, do it. Feel it. Envision the world where you have no weight on your shoulders and everything around you is spotless, and you just can breeeeeathe. Take that deep breath right now and imagine it. Okay, back to reality. What are you feeling now, or more specifically, two seconds after you completed exhaling? You feel the weight of the world on your shoulders again. The only spotless thing around, in fact, is the shirt on your back, and depending on the day you've had, that might not even be true. The difficult conversation you've been putting off is tapping its foot in the back of your brain. The rent payment that was due three days ago is staring at you from your nightstand. The self-degrading thoughts about your love life and capability to hold any relationship is sucker punching you in the gut. Here's the best news I've ever heard, or told myself, even: That deep breath out that you've longed for, it's not dependent on your circumstances. Pain is inevitable. Relationship strife is unavoidable. Unfair conditions will never cease. If you feel like you're getting along fine, you're probably living in your basement with pillows blocking the windows and eating saltines 24/7. Real life is hard. It just is. Not to sound like the therapist that you ditched after one session, but accepting you have a problem is the first step to the solution. Okay, enough with beating the now-brutally-massacred horse. What's the solution? Life can suck, so what? Let's numb it and keep our heads down and press on, right? Well, we can definitely try that. Then we wake up the next morning, or the feeling has passed, or the person has left, and where are we then? What do we do? Numb, numb, keep numbing. Don't feel, so that you won't feel. But we want to feel, right? That's what living is. Feeling. Not just existing. Sometimes I think we're so afraid to experience the bad that it takes us far away from experiencing the good- the true good. Not the quick and fleeting good. This "good"? Enough metaphors or distractions. It's life to the full. It's accepting that we are and always will be messes. God says you are. You probably heard that in a way that has allowed you to never step within 200 yards of a church ground since then. Hear it in a different way this time though. You're a mess, and you're allowed to be, and your mess, sort of defines who you are. Before the Christians reading this give me a virtual passive-aggressive death glare for that statement, let me explain. You are God's beautiful mess. God made you, saw you get broken, and showed you that he loves those broken pieces, and that it doesn't disqualify you from being loved by Him. He made sure of it, in fact... "God demonstrates His own love for us in this, while we were still sinners (Really, REALLY messy), Christ died for us." Romans 5:8 The deep breath out, the sigh of relief we've been searching for? It can be taken at any time, in any moment, whatever the circumstance, because we know that the mess is always there, and God's hope is always there, even more. His hope that He loves us where we are at, and not as we "should" be, because we're never going to be as we "should be". Are we going to want to take a sigh of relief mid-breakup, mid-job-failure or mid-family travesty? Probably not. And that's okay, because the point is not the sigh of relief. It's the knowledge and little voice in your soul telling you that in the midst of ALL the shit ALWAYS, God...loves you. He does. He can't not. He's not rolling his eyes, waiting for you to get your life together. The only getting-together that needed to happen was our souls being paid for. Which He did. Start looking at your dysfunctional self as one that is accepted, and can therefore live life, rather the other way around. We might begin to notice a difference.
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AuthorSenior at The Ohio State University. Full time idealist and part time realist. Archives
January 2017
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