Thank You.

Tired

keep your chin up.

Fed up.

Swallow.

Failure.

Don't back down.

Complain.

Stuff it.

Self conscious.

Keep smiling.

Disconnected.

So is half the world.

I guess I'm not the only one

so I'll stay if you will, and fight.

Sometimes I could just lay down and die

because I'm afraid of this fear I wear.

Look in the mirror and see my natural face---

I miss the makeup, that other me.

Sometimes I could just lay down and cry

imprisoned in slow-motion corporate machinery

when I really want to dance,

to shake my body, to punch the air, stamp the ground.

I looked inside my heart and saw a horrible vision

of death and black, dirty decay.

Tell me it was a lie?

Tell me I'm clean?

I want to come out of this prison

and laugh at death once more

But I fear the God of old Israel

who seemed then to want fearful reverence

I just can't keep myself sorted.

Does He want my feet or my hands?

I could be happy with so much less

I'm needing so much more.

Because I've got it so good

& I've got it so bad.

-----

The above I wrote at work the other day. Some days I feel I could explode as I constrain my energy to the slow-moving but flurried pace my tasks require. The pent up energy stays in my head, and I analyze things into the ground. Other days I'm joyful and not bothered by the speed of the clock's hands. Generally, when the nature of a task allows me to listen to my ipod, I have the joy of listening to some downhere, Derek Webb, and podcasts by Ravi Zacharias. Occasionally, however, there's a day where even that doesn't help.

Sometimes makes me question my mental health, but I see trends affecting my mood & energy. Caffeine, breakfast, sleep, all play in for sure, and I'm not consistent with any of those factors. Water intake probably matters too, and I'm not consistent with that. Nor have I gone out of my way to exercise for months (I know myself enough to say when spring hits, I'll be out running, but that doesn't solve the winter problem).

But one big factor I've spent most of my life not giving much space to, is how my day is affected by starting it out in surrender. And then, thought by thought, impulse by impulse, surrendering my entire day to God. I'm like a battery that, by neglect, has grown so weak that I can't even hold a charge. So, staying on the charger. It's making such a difference.

My emo relapse this evening is a standard self-conscious reaction to all the video editing I've been doing from the Downhomie Palooza last summer, where I took it upon myself to be a really ridiculous narrator of the whole weekend retreat. It was a blast at the time, and I had a blast recently showing the videos to another downhomie, but alone, being as amateur of an editor as I was videographer (my aim & steadiness grew more careless as the weekend progressed. Kinda matches the outlandish narrating.) But to sit there editing--seeing myself, my expressions, from the outside instead of the inside--it brings on a self awareness I'd rather not have. Next time I'd love to do it again, but with a real video camera, and a steadier hand, and a slightly calmer behavior.

Anyway. I also just blew my evening on the computer, something I was trying to stop doing by getting off facebook and Twitter. Fact is, I somewhat miss facebook, and much more, miss Twitter. I miss being able to shout out to people. Technically I have access to all the same people through other means, but I haven't bothered. Okay, so I got a bit of laundry done and some work on the video, which is itself hard to pin down as a valuable work or not. People will laugh at times, maybe tear up a bit other times, and to finish it will be to follow through with something I promised. I guess my disillusionment with computer stuff is how intangible the results are.

Which leads me to something that happened today that was exciting!! Something broke! Why should I rejoice that something broke? I was having a fine time copying hundreds and hundreds of papers, when the copier jammed. I opened it up, saw the paper scrunched up like an accordion folder. Pulled on it.... and suddenly I saw chunks of red rubber! I backed away and said "Oooh, not good! bad news! May day! May day!" People are used to my mutterings, and the bosses were in the back of the room looking at a scanner, but the our delivery driver happened by, and reached in and pulled out one of the pieces of rubber. We tested the copier and it seemed to still work, but in one spot the toner wasn't sticking. So we stopped the copying process, I switched to scanning, and I felt a general sense of upliftedness.

I asked myself, why do I get a kick out of this? Making copies happens to be my favorite task, so I wasn't excited because of switching out. But it's a spot of excitement in the day? But really, there's such a sense of relief--release of tension. Why? My best guess is that, I spend so much time thinking and pondering intangible problems I can't do anything about. Here, suddenly, is something that's broken. Not maybe broken, but certainly broken. And there's a solution. Call the service guy. He comes. He knows what's wrong, he replaces the part, and that's that.

I know I'm a sinner, I know Jesus Christ is the one who fixes that. But sometimes there is so much more on my mind than whether I told a lie, thought a wrong thought. I think constantly about creating art, finding clients, writing, getting a place of my own, and then battling with the discontentment, impatience, and covetousness that fills my thoughts.

It was in one of the appendices of Desiring God that Piper wrote, number 11 in a 15-section list of ways to fight for joy: "Get the rest, exercise, and proper diet that your body was designed by God to have." Sometimes I make such a separation of my spiritual life and my physical life that I feel no motivation to do what's right physically. I loved this comment: "What brought light to this perplexity is that one of the ways the Spirit produces His fruit in our lives is by humbling us enough to believe that we are not God and that God can run the world without our staying up too late and getting up too early." Yes, I'm guilty often of staying up late with the idea that I had yet something to accomplish, some way to redeem a long day full of wasted moments.

But no--the day is at an end and it's time to say, "Lord, this morning I offered my day to You, even as I rolled out of bed and set out to take it back. I offered it to You a few more times, and I felt your love... who am I to say how well I served you today? I don't feel good about how it went. I tried to be kind. But later I hid. I tried to share. But then I fell into the pool whose reflective surface I'd been staring at. I hate it when I spend that much time thinking about myself, God. But one miraculous breath at a time, You showed that You still have a purpose here for me. As I heard a fine speaker say recently, here's the paper you gave me--I scribbled on it, I ruined it. Can I have another? Tomorrow can you help me breathe again--and move--and have my being? Your kingdom come--Your will be done, for thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory, for ever and ever. Amen."