Apparently, a bunch of people assumed the thing I hadn’t done in a while that I was refering to in my facebook status was blogging. I infer this because my recorded views today (really since I updated my status) has reached a critical number. This site has received as many views in the past three hours as it has in the previous week. But enough of this silly talk about doing what people want.
There are about eight different ways I can take this dialogue, not the least of which is what I’ve been doing in the month long hiatus from blogging. I hope people don’t expect me to be that shallow with such a resource. In the past month, as has happened before, I’ve thought about blogging, only to realize just in time that the only things I’d blog about right now would damage my integrity in a way that can’t be mended. I should have been known not only by what I do and say here but also by what I don’t say or do. I believe that what a person doesn’t do/say speaks to the character of a person just as much as what that person actually does/says. In the light of what they don’t do/say, one might see more powerfully the merits of what they do do/say.
Enough of the abstract that I’m certain only a few of my readership will be able to follow without asking questions. I think I have to amend my estimate of the possible directions to a larger figure. Let’s skip the shallow what and go on to the infinitely more insightful why. I haven’t had time really to sift my thoughts this past month and produce something other than what I deem improper and unacceptable. Work, in a large way, has stolen much of my life and energy, though the fact that I’ve buried myself in it means I allowed it to. I’ve been dealing with a very tough issue and I believe most people have noticed my retreat from the social scene, whether that notice was cognizant or in the subconscience. That stems largely from this issue, but the very thing I tried to escape from a year and a half ago has recaptured me and I let it.
Now is the time for honesty, more than any other time. I was/am having a crisis of identity. Identity in professional career, identity among peers and friends, identity in God. I’m the biggest hypocrite I’ve seen in forever, and I mean that like an actor, not a christian who can’t practice what he preaches. I’ve saved these slots for my thoughts on life, Christianity, God, and reflections about my own life. To some, they are deemed applicable to them and I glorify God that they’ve been touched by these posts. To others, the content flies over their heads, either because they weren’t meant to understand it or they have no wish to tag along with me in the digging process. Still others might be so used to hearing complex and thought-provoking things from me that they’ve tuned out the simple things I try to articulate. To them, the simple things are more complex than the complex abstractions. Even others make a serious miscalculation when they ask for specifics when I’ve chosen to be cryptic or vague and then get frustrated when I don’t oblige them with those specifics.
Written Aug 23 (Sun)
“I’m spiritually anorexic right now, starving myself with an attitude of busi-ness and tiredness. It is in this time when the defenses deteriorate and the struggle for godliness in actions and thoughts is lost….God, forgive me for taking You for granted and neglecting our relationship. Cause me to love You deeply again. That must be my desire. I need You in an unexplainable way. Forgive me for the times I’ve rebelled, even this past week.”
Written Aug 24 (Mon)
“I am a dying breed, a breed going extinct because no one appreciates it or thinks they need it. Therefore, they see no need to save it. A relic of a simpler time, a time they don’t understand because they don’t want to; it takes too much effort. I wither away as they look on, mistaking the symptoms for something their own minds can conjure up to rationalize their deep neglect. I cannot be but what I am but what I am is not wanted nor understood. An ideal that has suddenly become vile is the ideal I strive for. A question still haunts me and I must ask it—WHY?”
Written Sept 12 1am
“My thoughts sound like the dialogue of a psychiatry session. My memory isn’t regular but images triggered by words. Enough of it hasn’t actually happened to make me suspicious. I was never at a reception in Glen Eyrie, Colorado but I remembered it. The recent memories are flashbacks, like the feeling of deja vu. In one conversation, I was brought back to the numerous times of avoidance, delay, and misunderstanding. it had an intended point as well as an implicated one. Some things have happened too often for them to be merely coincidental. Some of these are getting scary, such as the thought that I shouldn’t shower because it will cause flashbacks of the time I almost drowned. I’ve never almost drowned, so why? Sometimes, I argue a sequence of sentences, their word usage, verbal phrasology, half the time the arguer has another person’s voice, someone I know well. Yet I never verbalize these exchanges and the refined words die in my mind as they are pushed out by some other thought process. Anyone besides me who reads this has to be thinking I’m a psychotic nut job. I just want it to be gone so I can sleep… and the headaches leaving would be great too.”
Written later that same day
“The things of God have become an external motivation for me with an external reward. Eternity is not in my heart but rather an external hope. This influences my spiritual anorexia and thought process. A kingdom that is eternal must be made up only of things that are eternal, otherwise something in the kingdom will die. The eternal kingdom must reside in the heart or one can’t be a part of it. Lord, cause eternity and Your kingdom to reside in my heart and make a living. Not like a hotel where it comes and goes, not like a workplace where it leaves for the night, but like a house built as an estate to endure as an inheritance for the generations.”
The key is in God’s response to me:
“You don’t pray, you don’t seek Me, you don’t chew on my word and meditate on it. You don’t listen for My voice. You shy away from My embrace which is to refresh you. And you wonder why you are so weak in faith, so prone to fall, so profoundly and deeply tired, so stuck in a rut or a routine of meaningless failure because you fail to eat of My bread and drink of My cup. So press in to the feast table I prepare for you.”
The long and the short of it is I haven’t been consistently in the Word like it might appear that I am. I have only read my Bible on three consecutive days three times in the past month and that only because I was reminded to read today. With each next day that I miss, the mental and spiritual decay is exponential and I fall far short of the standard of maturity I’ve written about and the battle I face is lost daily just as much as it’s won daily in the Word.
I guess what I’m trying to say is don’t think of me as some spiritual person or as one who writes thought provoking material and miss the fact that I’m still as imperfect as the next guy or the fact that I can also talk in plain terms without the need of provocation of thought. Maybe blogging was the thing I haven’t done in a while, or maybe it was the fact that I wrote a little dialogue into my story tonight, or maybe I already did something I hadn’t done in a while when I ran 9 miles, or maybe the cryptic facebook status itself was the thing I hadn’t done in a while. Whatever it was, I’m still not going to say…yet.
JA Menter 3
~”If I allow rage to change who I am, the murderer has killed two people.” Alan Eppes (Numb3rs: Season 6 episode 1)
