To Hell With It...

Guilt is a rope. I follow the rope, hoping it leads to somewhere. At the end of the rope is a noose called fear. I stick my head inside. I jump over the edge. Fear has won.

This is my life. I do this daily. When Paul wrote, "I die daily" I'm pretty sure he didn't mean suicide by way  of fear but that is my daily death. Fear is the savior I cling to. What has this savior given me? It has made me into nothing more than an asshole. Asshole is the only appropriate word that can describe it. Most other words aren't strong enough. When I think of the requirements of an asshole, I find in that the very thing I do with my life. This is why fear is bad, because it makes you do nothing but continue to acquire crap.

To hell with my fear! To hell with my guilt! Grace is the bed I'm sleeping in. Mercy is the water I'm bathing in. Hope is the air I'm breathing. Fear is a mistress I will no longer be sleeping with.

"Lord I believe, help my unbelief."

In Fyodor Dostoevsky's masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov he wrote, "It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt." I have lived that statement out the last few years. It seems I place it on myself, because I don't want to blindly accept something, especially something as big and important as God. I desire strong faith, but often when I see faith lived out without doubt I see it as a weakness, a deficiency in accounting for all possible alternatives. Sometimes we want so badly to believe in something that we don't really believe in anything, we believe in our belief. If looking at belief from this angle, can it be an idol? I guess it can, but I'm not sure i would categorize it as such. The closer I grow towards God, the more fearful I am of what or who exactly God is- yet I still find an irresistible comfort in my belief. 

Is it really such a weakness to believe wholeheartedly in something...anything? Is it Satan allowing me to maintain my doubt? Is it God? Is it rationality? Is it because of my upbringing, or because of my resentment for authority? I can't answer any of these questions, but I am afraid of my doubts. I fear them because in my imagination, they hinder me from fulfilling my purpose, from fulfilling who God has created me to be. 

Despite my doubts, I rely heavily on my faith. I have experiences that seem to prove God, but have doubts that it is only my intense desire to have God be real, and be who I believe He is. But God isn't who I believe He is. God is God. "I Am" is what He calls Himself. Yet, my fear is that we have misunderstood the simple complexity of that statement. It's a beautiful story. Father creates a perfect world for His children. Father gives children the ability to mess everything up, because He wants their love to be genuine. The ability to choose. The children really screw it all up. They are punished by their own selfishness. God desires to allow free will to continue. He sends a payment for the selfishness of His children. This payment is said to fulfill who accepts it as their own payment. Love. Restoration. Sacrifice. These are the elements of a beautiful story. 

These are the elements of a beautiful life as well. If I live a life of love; of restoration; of sacrifice, beautiful things happen. It can be argued that that is because God works that way, so life must. But it can also be argued that life works that way, so we've made God work the same way. I can't ever really say. 

In an effort to be right, I retain my doubt and my faith. I attempt to have them measured out equally, to keep myself in check at all times. I think this is healthy, in a sense, but has become unhealthy, because it has caused me to fear. Fear is the complete opposite of love. My life has been written by fear. Fear of everything. Failure. Other people. Myself. God. 

Throughout it all, there has been something pulling me, nudging me closer to a purpose. I call this nudging God. Or the Holy Spirit. This Easter, I intend to celebrate Christ's sacrifice on the cross. It's a lot of craziness that I believe, but sometimes, truth is crazy. I cannot sit down and systematically prove every detail of the Bible's truth, or every piece of minutia proving God's existence, but I can say that whatever is propelling me towards God, despite my unbelief, is something bigger than myself. Something bigger than my ego, my self conscious desire for there to be something out there holding the cosmos together. God is real. I said it. I have said it to myself a million times, always followed by an ellipsis and a question mark. 

Am I ignorant? Yes, completely and totally ignorant. But so is everyone else on the planet. I won't be so arrogant to hold my belief in the absolute Truth of God over anyone else's head. My belief holds just as much weight as theirs. That isn't some sort of wishy washy statement saying there is no truth. There's only so much we can know. We each have our faith. Belief in God always seems to bare the need for proof, while atheism is allowed to merely accuse. My doubt is slightly dwindling, but it has a long way to go. Like the boy in Matthew cried, "Lord I believe, help my unbelief."

I fear what I fear what I fear

"The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortune, but its fears.'
A.C. Benson


Some days I really just don't want to be me. Yeah, I am sure that comes across as some super sensitive 14 year old girl who doesn't get her way, but don't all of us have that in us from time to time? If we're really honest with ourselves, don't we all just have our days or weeks where we just want to get our way? Maybe it is just me, well, in addition to actual 14 year old girls, but I'm willing to go ahead and say that I have those feelings.

My brain is telling me not to say that because I have a hard enough time being a "man" as it is. I have very little body/facial hair, my voice isn't what one would categorize as manly(especially when it randomly cracks), I'm not really into hunting/guns/UFC/Action movies/cars/heavy metal...this could go on and on. I am pretty passive and laid back. The thing is, I'm okay with all of that. I don't think that I need some way to prove myself. So what if I cried like a baby during a film like Dead Man Walking? Is it really a big deal if I would rather spend a day at the mall than a day fixing a car or shooting a gun?

The thing is: no one has ever confronted me about my lack of manliness. I doubt anyone even knows that I cried during Dead Man Walking or Up. And now that you know, you probably are wondering why I am pondering on it. This isn't some way of me coming out of the closet as a film crier. It's more a question of my identity, and where I get it from.

We all seek to be seen in a certain light. Some of us are able to reach a level where we say, "This is who I am". But it's rare that a person truly has one of those euphoric moments. It's sad because I think an identity is a terrible thing to lose sleep over, and I don't technically lose sleep over my identity per say, but I do wonder about job's or things in my life, what should I get rid of? What should I keep in order to maintain the identity, or the me I want others to see, or at least think I am?

Part of my identity, and I am slowly realizing this about myself, is wrapped up in pretending I could care less about my identity. To a degree this is actually true. I can throw clothes on and not really care how "cool" I look as long as I'm comfortable, and it doesn't cause me to wonder what others are thinking of what I am wearing. But, at the same time, I have realized that I maintain a certain level of sameness throughout the years in order to not surprise people, so that way they aren't questioning my identity. I have had the same hairstyle(off and on) for most of my life. I still dress pretty much how I did in high school(plaid shirt and jeans FTW). It's all a matter of how I want to be perceived. I see the weakness in others(mainly women) who worry deeply about their dress when going out. The time it eats away. But what I don't realize is that my identity is no stronger than theirs. Mine is probably weaker. Mine is so weak, in fact, that I am living in fear. The fear that someone is going to call me out on my search for an identity.

My identity is me, but I am not my identity. 

Fear is something I live my life by. Love is nice. Faith is cool. Hope is sweet. Truth. Happiness. Friendship. All the things we read in Hallmark cards is what we would like to be defined by. I know I would. They are cheesy but we buy them in bundles and give them to each other because they represent what we want to be or say or do.

When FDR said we should "fear nothing but fear itself" he was speaking truth. Fear only leads to more fear. I just cannot detach myself from my fear. I have convinced myself of that. I have befriended fear. I have slept with fear. Made babies with fear, and fear and I are raising our little fear children as I type this. But that relationship with fear has made a shell out of me. I want to be an honest person but I am afraid to be. Whoever said "honesty is the best policy" probably never had any friends. It's hard to be truly honest and be loved. There are parts of us that are ours, and if we're honest with others, those parts of our self will no longer be our own.

We all like to say we're open books, but we aren't. We're sitting on the shelf, a little dusty, maybe we're opened up every now and then to remind ourselves that we are still alive, but we're never read in depth. We're medicated, obsessed, critical of others, and detached.

I am disgusted with myself when I think about the ways I have allowed fear to control my motives. In the bigger picture and the little picture. Fear has put out the fire and the passion in my heart to do anything. Almost every decision in my life was predicated by fear and even if I overcame the fear and made the decision, that's usually only because there was a greater fear outside of that.

My identity is made up of many things, some good, mostly bad. Here is the way I see myself in all honesty:

I am ugly, but only half the time.
I am fat, but mostly okay with it.
I am pale, and totally okay with it.
I lack discipline.
I lie every day.
I don't do enough.
I rarely do anything.
I have a lot of love and compassion for people.
I am a good writer...sometimes.
I think I am genuinely genuine(how's that for an adjective) 90% of the time and a completely false person 10% of the time..
I can be funny.
I need to be funny.
I have placed much of my identity in making others laugh and when they don't I feel like a failure.
I love playing music but I am terrible.
I want to impress people with knowledge I possess but don't want to seem as if I am trying to impress them...and I hate myself for admitting that.
I am a happy person 97% of the time and the other 3% I am incredibly depressed.
I doubt myself.
I doubt God.
I make myself my own god.
I have trust issues...not in a lack of trust, but in too much trust...except when it comes to politics or religion. I have lack of trust issues there, but for good reason.
I want to make everyone happy even people I hate.
I don't want to hate anyone, but sometimes I do...and it's probably you.
I like attention but I don't like to look like I like attention.
Most of my life is summed up in enjoying something but not wanting to seem as if I enjoy something because if someone knew I was enjoying said thing, they might think I am ridiculous.
I feel like my lack of mentioning God will make some people question my faith, but though I have my doubts I hold strong to my faith, and am becoming more reliant on it through my fear.
I said the that last thing because I was afraid of being judged.

There's so much more baggage of identity crisis that I carry but just cannot remember or bring myself to say. I know we all have this, we all carry it around, and we just don't have to. I'm trying to rid myself of it.