But sometimes it just feels so heavy. The overwhelming sensation to just be hopeless.
Sometimes it's too heavy I hate to fight it because it's like taking a cold shower. It's easier to slip into my natural hole and ...
But I have to fight it.
I fight it.
I have to fight for joy.
I have to fight for love and the truth.
I have to let myself be loved by God because naturally I don't want Him. My body wants human love and I get the two confused. What my body wants is not what my soul longs for.
I have to let go.
I cannot follow the desires of my spirit and my body. They are in opposition.
So I have to fight it,
But I have to fight it.
No one else can fight it for you, no one can guarantee that it's your genuine desire, but you.
You can get answers from all the people you turn to, but they could be wrong.
You cannot avoid the weight of glory that comes with the weight of freedom.
You are responsible for the way you go to God for help.
Do you fight for joy or do you fight for sympathy?
Life hurts when we think about what we wish we had or when we lay in ignorance of a deep desire smothered inside of us.
Fighting for joy is not about ignoring your desires, but it's about realizing the deepest desire--not some temporary or imaginary thing. The deepest human desire is love, but there is no simple answer as to what love is.
What is love?
Love is a life for a life, it takes more than 1 to enter into love.
So if love is the deepest human need, and if love must involve more than one person, then the next question is there a way that something else masquerades as love? Because clearly we see couples "in love" all the time but it doesn't seem to meet the deepest human need, they keep on needing.
Love must be something else besides just the appearance of a couple. Love must be more like a mother. Or like a friend who gives their life to shield a friend from a bullet. Love must be self-giving, yet it appears we all look for a love to give us something. We don't look to give ourselves as much as we look to have something for ourselves.
It's this part that I'm having a hard time walking in. Letting go to let love in. Especially with God.
Let go of the "what ifs" and "how comes", the I "can'ts" and "whys", the "whens" and the "not yets". I have to let it all go. And I have to breathe and cry and pray and sit in silence that God would renew my mind and help me break free from the thoughts that imprison me to a sense of hopelessness. To let go of my perception of certain circumstances. It's not a trick, but a hold of reality and my ability to give.
There might be a problem in my life, but that shouldn't be where I fix my focus. My focus should also look to what is making me think this is a problem in the first place. What reasons do I have for thinking this is a problem. Would this still be a problem if some area of my thought process were different so as to make what once was a problem not anymore?
For example, my friend said she wanted to eat but that it was getting late. She was implying that her problem was whether she should eat or just try and sleep. In her case, it was a problem because eating late meant one thing while not eating late meant another. These meanings were what led her to this "problem". Meanings and her physical hunger and probably some deeper psychological hum revving at all times were what caused her to feel the strains of her "problem". But it's the meaning of things that we have an actual ability to contemplate and possibly shift! We can't tell our bodies when or when not to be hungry and we can't tell when our emotions will be high or low. We can, however, contemplate the meanings of things. This is why it's so important that we work with what we actually have some malleability with. Otherwise, we are blindly letting our circumstances or our bodies or our feelings turn us into whatever happens to them. Like animals. But we are not like animals.
We are human.
We can contemplate and consider meanings.
I need to contemplate meanings all the time because I love love and I love joy and peace. I love beauty and truth. So I have to make sure my meanings are not just happening to me by my body, circumstances or feelings. I have to know what I've contemplated on my part because I can. And using contemplation I can sift through the meaningless to get to the meaningful. And this is where I find my deepest desire to be loved by God, and all at once I see I have what I want most! And this meaning affects all of my "problems".
There are particular trends I have found to be my usual pattern, so I'm learning to be more aware of when I'm possibly in need of contemplating a meaning.
For example, feeling sad is so natural for me, but sadness is not in itself a bad thing. It's good when it's for truly sad things, but at times I know my sadness can be hiding a distorted meaning. I've learned that it's easy for me to feel worthless and unlovable because my thoughts project a perfect me that I could never be, only God could be the standard I set for perfection, and I'm only human. So when I feel sadness coming on without any particular sad reason, I have to contemplate if the meaning is in need of correction.
I am broken to be sure, until Christ clothes me, then I'm perfect in Him alone. He is the solution to my deepest needs, my need to be whole.
He is the only way.
Jmegrey
Ps: contemplation is a spiritual discipline :)
It is:
keeping company with Jesus all the time
It's freedom from a preoccupation with self that keeps you from focusing on others
living the tensions of life reflectively rather than avoiding them
relishing your humanness and the beauty of each of your brothers and sisters
seeing there is more to life than efficiency and productivity
being patient with life
being, not just doing
developing an awareness of the richness of the interior life
knowing through faith, hope and love, not just the mind
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
(2 Corinthians 4:18)
See: The Spiritual Disciplines Handbook (Calhoun, A.)
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