Lately I've had the most trouble getting motivated. School, work, church, social life, even hobbies. In fact, I think this problem has been building up, making it increasingly difficult to accomplish anything.
I've never been much good at motivating myself. Don't know why, I just have trouble committing myself to a task and seeing it through to the end. That's been my whole life, as far as I can remember. As a result, efforts have failed, opportunities have been missed, and potentials have remained untapped. It's not that I've lacked the ability to do anything. Just, when faced with actually doing it, I always lose interest or momentum.
Now it's different though. Intensified. Tasks as simple as cleaning up my apartment, washing the dishes, or going grocery shopping seem impossibly undesirable, and I simply cannot motivate myself to do them. For home life, that's an inconvenience. But when it comes to things like school and work, it's a hazard with huge potential for destruction.
I know the general time frame that this intensification of sloth began. Somewhere between two major car-related incidents that occurred earlier this year. But those are material issues, basically resolved. My debt has (I think) been settled, I have a car to drive, and I have accepted the loss of both previous vehicles. All said and done, they're just things. Moreover, those are things that don't directly have anything at all to do with motivation.
But there's something else about it that has damaged me on a deeper level. I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but it definitely has more to do with the events themselves than the actual things involved. Like these occurrences have hurt me on a spiritual level.
I'm trying to analyze the feelings I've had about those events, in an effort to diagnose the problem and formulate a solution. But based on an even greater lack of motivation that's occurred within the past couple of days, there might be other things involved; things that might be unrelated to those events.
Monday, November 24, 2014
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Farsighted
There are times I look at my life and wonder how I ever let it get to where it is. Most of the time I just try to press on, living day by day, hour by hour, focusing on the tasks at hand. But anytime I stop to look at what it is on the whole at the moment, where it's been, where it's going, it's disheartening. My life isn't anything like what I want it to be. From my perspective, it's a hopeless ruin with no possibility of ever being anything good.
That's my pessimistic nature talking, though. In fact, even looking at life through the scope of "what it looks like to me right now" is pretty bleak. Our view is so limited, it's easy to get caught up in temporary worries. So my life appears to be pure chaos, and I have no idea where it's going or what I should be doing about it. But really, does anyone ever know anything about their life for sure? Relying on circumstances being what they should be isn't Godly living. Relying on God's provision is.
I know this God that takes all things and makes them good in the most unlikely of ways. How we don't understand, can't comprehend, how beautiful something will be until we're looking back on it, seeing all the toil and suffering poured out on it. And what better way to glorify Him? That is my one hope, through all of this: that God, the Great Physician and Supreme Artist, can heal my broken heart and shattered life, and make this wreckage into something uniquely beautiful.
That's my pessimistic nature talking, though. In fact, even looking at life through the scope of "what it looks like to me right now" is pretty bleak. Our view is so limited, it's easy to get caught up in temporary worries. So my life appears to be pure chaos, and I have no idea where it's going or what I should be doing about it. But really, does anyone ever know anything about their life for sure? Relying on circumstances being what they should be isn't Godly living. Relying on God's provision is.
I know this God that takes all things and makes them good in the most unlikely of ways. How we don't understand, can't comprehend, how beautiful something will be until we're looking back on it, seeing all the toil and suffering poured out on it. And what better way to glorify Him? That is my one hope, through all of this: that God, the Great Physician and Supreme Artist, can heal my broken heart and shattered life, and make this wreckage into something uniquely beautiful.
Saturday, November 15, 2014
The Slide
One of the frustrating things about progress is the inevitable regression. There's nothing that knocks you off of an emotional high from successfully improving your habits quite like stepping back into your old ways. And one thing I've noticed with it is that once you've done it one time, it becomes much easier to do it again.
This whole one step forward, two steps back thing that happens entirely too often is disheartening, to say the least. I find myself constantly coming down on myself every time I screw up and slip back to my old ways. The thing that frustrates me about it is pretty much everything. I know the problem as it's happening, and I feel powerless to stop it. Then, once I'm through the phase, I remember that, while there isn't anything that makes backsliding okay, it is at least understandable, and even to be expected, to an extent. Yet, that doesn't make me feel better about it. I still feel guilty, ashamed, and irritated with myself, despite the normalcy of regression and the knowledge that I'm already forgiven.
Times like this, I try to remind myself of the progress I've made in this respect, and that the internal adversity is to be expected, and that I need to be patient and gracious with myself. Most importantly, I need to remember and be comforted by the fact that no sin can ever separate me from God's love and forgiveness. It's just so hard for me, because I have so much trouble forgiving myself, I have trouble imagining anyone else being able to do so, even the Creator of everything, who knows me better than I know myself.
This whole one step forward, two steps back thing that happens entirely too often is disheartening, to say the least. I find myself constantly coming down on myself every time I screw up and slip back to my old ways. The thing that frustrates me about it is pretty much everything. I know the problem as it's happening, and I feel powerless to stop it. Then, once I'm through the phase, I remember that, while there isn't anything that makes backsliding okay, it is at least understandable, and even to be expected, to an extent. Yet, that doesn't make me feel better about it. I still feel guilty, ashamed, and irritated with myself, despite the normalcy of regression and the knowledge that I'm already forgiven.
Times like this, I try to remind myself of the progress I've made in this respect, and that the internal adversity is to be expected, and that I need to be patient and gracious with myself. Most importantly, I need to remember and be comforted by the fact that no sin can ever separate me from God's love and forgiveness. It's just so hard for me, because I have so much trouble forgiving myself, I have trouble imagining anyone else being able to do so, even the Creator of everything, who knows me better than I know myself.
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
The Way Home
I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again. This has been a particularly difficult year for me. There have been many unfortunate events, some of which will never get the resolution I would have originally wanted. But I've already come to terms with them, for the most part, and I recognize that even the issues that haven't been resolved are in God's hands. Doesn't mean I'm happy about it, doesn't mean I don't still hold out hope. But when I'm in my right state of mind, I can endure and live with it.
Something I just began to realize, though, is that the stresses of recent months are summed up by more than just the crap that's happened since my spiritual journey back to Christ. These other factors aren't events, so much as accumulations of behavior patterns that have been present for varying periods of time.
Let's start with the most recent: stagnation. I'm not talking about just my faith here, but my life in general. For about six years I bummed around, waiting. Waiting for what, I don't know. Waiting for something to happen. An opportunity, a relationship, a push in the right direction... whatever. Instead of using the God-given empowerment to affect my life, I sat on my hands and waited for something and/or nothing to happen. Nothing happened for most of that time. Then something did. Then a few more somethings, some happy, some sad. But the combination of these events was finally enough to kick my complacent life into motion.
Now we'll look at something a bit further back. Over half my life ago, I began a phase of rebellion. Against what? Again, who really knows? I was bitter about [something], because [reasons]. So I took it out on pretty much everything. My peers, my teachers, my parents, and most truly myself. I raged against the machine, a rebel without a cause and without a clue. Somehow this lifestyle appealed to me. As a result, my grades, study habits, and work ethic in general all suffered pretty heavily. They never really recovered, and that's ultimately how I ended up in the aforementioned stagnant phase.
Finally, let's talk about the deep-seated, child issues. This is harder to define. I've been a pretty subdued, depressive person for as long as I can remember. This proclivity stands in stark contrast with the way my entire immediate family is, and that I know of, it isn't caused by any particularly traumatizing events from my distant past. It just seems to be a natural condition for me, and one that I've never fully understood. Rest assured, I've spent countless hours dwelling on it throughout my life. It's only recently that I've decided to approach professional help with an open mind. Up until now, I've believed I could handle it all on my own, and I've done so with minimal success. But really, why do that when there's help available? How much my pride and pessimism have gotten in the way of healing for all these years. But all regrets aside, I can even look back and recognize this problem as a possible, at least partial cause for my rebellious streak.
So what's so difficult about these things now, all of a sudden? Because most certainly they're more than the sum of what they are.
I think that, because I've had wiser people speaking into my life, and my pride has broken for some key moments of their wisdom, I finally find myself in a position to start changing these behaviors. But that's just what it is: a start. We're looking at six years of complacency, fourteen years of rebellion, and twenty-six years of depression, all of which I'm trying to reverse now. God is and has been doing amazing things with my life, and the change in these behaviors is among them. But that doesn't mean it's easy at all. He is growing me and maturing me, and that's a drawn out and painful process. Failure and backsliding are to be expected along the way, and the hardest thing in the world for me is to show myself grace through all this.
I hope and pray that my recognition of the issues at hand will remind me not only of my need to be patient with myself, but also of the progress we have made, as encouragement to press on.
Something I just began to realize, though, is that the stresses of recent months are summed up by more than just the crap that's happened since my spiritual journey back to Christ. These other factors aren't events, so much as accumulations of behavior patterns that have been present for varying periods of time.
Let's start with the most recent: stagnation. I'm not talking about just my faith here, but my life in general. For about six years I bummed around, waiting. Waiting for what, I don't know. Waiting for something to happen. An opportunity, a relationship, a push in the right direction... whatever. Instead of using the God-given empowerment to affect my life, I sat on my hands and waited for something and/or nothing to happen. Nothing happened for most of that time. Then something did. Then a few more somethings, some happy, some sad. But the combination of these events was finally enough to kick my complacent life into motion.
Now we'll look at something a bit further back. Over half my life ago, I began a phase of rebellion. Against what? Again, who really knows? I was bitter about [something], because [reasons]. So I took it out on pretty much everything. My peers, my teachers, my parents, and most truly myself. I raged against the machine, a rebel without a cause and without a clue. Somehow this lifestyle appealed to me. As a result, my grades, study habits, and work ethic in general all suffered pretty heavily. They never really recovered, and that's ultimately how I ended up in the aforementioned stagnant phase.
Finally, let's talk about the deep-seated, child issues. This is harder to define. I've been a pretty subdued, depressive person for as long as I can remember. This proclivity stands in stark contrast with the way my entire immediate family is, and that I know of, it isn't caused by any particularly traumatizing events from my distant past. It just seems to be a natural condition for me, and one that I've never fully understood. Rest assured, I've spent countless hours dwelling on it throughout my life. It's only recently that I've decided to approach professional help with an open mind. Up until now, I've believed I could handle it all on my own, and I've done so with minimal success. But really, why do that when there's help available? How much my pride and pessimism have gotten in the way of healing for all these years. But all regrets aside, I can even look back and recognize this problem as a possible, at least partial cause for my rebellious streak.
So what's so difficult about these things now, all of a sudden? Because most certainly they're more than the sum of what they are.
I think that, because I've had wiser people speaking into my life, and my pride has broken for some key moments of their wisdom, I finally find myself in a position to start changing these behaviors. But that's just what it is: a start. We're looking at six years of complacency, fourteen years of rebellion, and twenty-six years of depression, all of which I'm trying to reverse now. God is and has been doing amazing things with my life, and the change in these behaviors is among them. But that doesn't mean it's easy at all. He is growing me and maturing me, and that's a drawn out and painful process. Failure and backsliding are to be expected along the way, and the hardest thing in the world for me is to show myself grace through all this.
I hope and pray that my recognition of the issues at hand will remind me not only of my need to be patient with myself, but also of the progress we have made, as encouragement to press on.
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
The Shattered Fortress
What can I say? God answers prayer.
It's amazing to me. God has been faithful, even though I have often not. I have worried and stressed, even been angry at Him for not answering in my timing or in my way. Yet the answers come, and in ways much better than I'd imagined.
Has my condition changed? Yes, it has, and it has been and will be an enormous blessing. My overwhelming financial troubles have been lifted from me. Of this I became aware last week. Praise God! But now, even more profoundly, my outlook is beginning to change. This, too, was something I could not have done myself. For the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel empowered to make changes in my life and in the environment around me. I have a newfound inspiration to have a positive impact.
This radical change leads me cognitively to the prayer to which I gave voice only half a day ago. I long for a passion for God. But for a long time, I've been drained of passion for anything at all. Now, He has instilled in me a passion for hard work and stewardship. I believe this passion is a testament to His undying love for me; evidence that He is worthy of my love, worship, and praise.
I pray that I never forget this joy at how faithful He is.
It's amazing to me. God has been faithful, even though I have often not. I have worried and stressed, even been angry at Him for not answering in my timing or in my way. Yet the answers come, and in ways much better than I'd imagined.
Has my condition changed? Yes, it has, and it has been and will be an enormous blessing. My overwhelming financial troubles have been lifted from me. Of this I became aware last week. Praise God! But now, even more profoundly, my outlook is beginning to change. This, too, was something I could not have done myself. For the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel empowered to make changes in my life and in the environment around me. I have a newfound inspiration to have a positive impact.
This radical change leads me cognitively to the prayer to which I gave voice only half a day ago. I long for a passion for God. But for a long time, I've been drained of passion for anything at all. Now, He has instilled in me a passion for hard work and stewardship. I believe this passion is a testament to His undying love for me; evidence that He is worthy of my love, worship, and praise.
I pray that I never forget this joy at how faithful He is.
Monday, November 3, 2014
Wander
A huge part of my return to faith has been dwelling on the conditions of it. Sort of a "where I am, where I've been, and where I'm going" type of analysis. I think things like that are important because we kind of need to take a step back and examine the big picture and all the principles therein. That, and as anyone who's spent time with me knows, I tend to over-analyze things by nature. Well, among the things that I've thought to death on this subject is what it was that caused me to fall away from my faith in the first place.
I've come up with a variety of possible reasons for this. Things like bad experiences with the church, or maybe exclusion from a clique or the "in-crowd" of a youth group, or even mild persecution from the world. But the truth of the matter is, while these things have definitely occurred to an extent (I never did fit in that well anyway), they're hardly prevalent enough to deter me from an environment and lifestyle that I truly want and believe in. Realizing this, I also had to reach the terms that my "reasons" weren't actually reasons at all, so much as arbitrary excuses based on conjecture, which acted as placeholders while I figured out where the problems really were. Because of that, I was never completely comfortable with my rationale. I would just subconsciously use it and put it out of my mind so that I could focus on other things.
It wasn't until recently that the pieces started to fall into place and finally make some degree of sense. The realization came from a combination of a couple of factors. One was reading through Crazy Love, specifically a large section about actually loving God. The other was an accumulation of observations I've made about my peers and role models in my Christian faith, specifically regarding their behaviors and mannerisms resulting from their apparent joy and peace, which are the fruits of their deep relationships with God. So what, then, is the ultimate reason that I fell away? What was it that I always lacked?
Passion.
I didn't have a passion for Christ. I didn't love God. I wasn't interested in the things that He honors. All my focus was (and in some sense, still has been) based around selfish, worldly motives. The frustrating part about all that? I didn't even know. I wasn't aware of what I needed and lacked. My deceptions were rooted so deep that I had myself thoroughly convinced that my heart was in the right place, when it wasn't. As a result, it's no wonder my faith, religion, and relationship with God were unfulfilling.
Again, this is something that is not entirely surprising. In fact, it stands to reason perfectly. I just never fully connected the dots. Now that a picture is beginning to form, I'm left reflecting on a more definite question: how do I change that?
Somewhere in the passages of Crazy Love, Francis Chan acknowledged this condition, and he advised prayer for a change in it. So here is my prayer, put simply: that I deepen my love for God and my passion for the things that He loves. This is one thing for which I can honestly and unreservedly say that I am desperate. If you're reading this, please pray this for me, as well.
I've come up with a variety of possible reasons for this. Things like bad experiences with the church, or maybe exclusion from a clique or the "in-crowd" of a youth group, or even mild persecution from the world. But the truth of the matter is, while these things have definitely occurred to an extent (I never did fit in that well anyway), they're hardly prevalent enough to deter me from an environment and lifestyle that I truly want and believe in. Realizing this, I also had to reach the terms that my "reasons" weren't actually reasons at all, so much as arbitrary excuses based on conjecture, which acted as placeholders while I figured out where the problems really were. Because of that, I was never completely comfortable with my rationale. I would just subconsciously use it and put it out of my mind so that I could focus on other things.
It wasn't until recently that the pieces started to fall into place and finally make some degree of sense. The realization came from a combination of a couple of factors. One was reading through Crazy Love, specifically a large section about actually loving God. The other was an accumulation of observations I've made about my peers and role models in my Christian faith, specifically regarding their behaviors and mannerisms resulting from their apparent joy and peace, which are the fruits of their deep relationships with God. So what, then, is the ultimate reason that I fell away? What was it that I always lacked?
Passion.
I didn't have a passion for Christ. I didn't love God. I wasn't interested in the things that He honors. All my focus was (and in some sense, still has been) based around selfish, worldly motives. The frustrating part about all that? I didn't even know. I wasn't aware of what I needed and lacked. My deceptions were rooted so deep that I had myself thoroughly convinced that my heart was in the right place, when it wasn't. As a result, it's no wonder my faith, religion, and relationship with God were unfulfilling.
Again, this is something that is not entirely surprising. In fact, it stands to reason perfectly. I just never fully connected the dots. Now that a picture is beginning to form, I'm left reflecting on a more definite question: how do I change that?
Somewhere in the passages of Crazy Love, Francis Chan acknowledged this condition, and he advised prayer for a change in it. So here is my prayer, put simply: that I deepen my love for God and my passion for the things that He loves. This is one thing for which I can honestly and unreservedly say that I am desperate. If you're reading this, please pray this for me, as well.
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