Feeling out of control is probably one of the worst feelings that a human is capable of experiencing.
You feel everything and nothing all at once. Everything you're taught to do in a crisis, all the judgement you're trained and ingrained with. All the steps to make informed decisions. All the steps to solve all your problems. None of that matters. You're taught steps to prevent and solve all sorts of unthinkable disasters from when you're young. Stop, look, and listen before crossing the road to avoid getting hit by a car. If you get lost in the woods, hug a tree and blow your whistle. If you're stuck in quicksand, lean back and float up. But what can you do when everything is spiraling out of control and you're stopping, looking desperately back and forth, trying to listen over the roar of your life falling apart but you still get hit. Harder. Harder. Over and over. You're lost in the vast forest of confusion clinging to a tree for dear life and blowing your whistle, screaming, crying out with all your might but no one saves you. You're sinking lower and lower into this never ending abyss and you're trying to lean back but you're being swallowed up by the earth. Nothing you do can change what's happening and everything and nothing is happening all at once.
f
a
l
l
i
n
g.
Freely falling into absolute nothingness and you're holding your breath waiting to hit rock bottom but it never seems to come.
This feeling of being completely helpless happens to everyone. Whether it's depression gripping your life and dragging you further and further away from sanity, or a series of unfortunate events that seem to bombard you relentlessly. When plans for our lives fail, and we're stuck spiraling, holding our breath, there's only one thing to do. Breathe. Breathe and cling for your life to the one thing that will never fail. The one person, that will never leave or forsake us. The one person who knows when we do hit rock bottom, we have the ability to dust ourselves off and climb the rugged walls. When we're lost in the forest of uncertainty, there is one tree we should cling to. The tree on which Jesus died. For no matter what in our lives changes, God is never changing. We won't make it out of the abyss unscathed, but He's an incredible healer. So Stop, Look, and Listen for God in the chaos. Cling to him for dear life and cry out his name. Lean back on him and allow him to raise you back up. We might fall, but God will not fail.
Isaiah 41: 13
For I am the LORD your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Saturday, April 27, 2013
The Beginning.
Dear Anonymous,
I'm writing to tell you about myself. My life. My decisions. My choices and the consequences thereof. The problem is that I have an infinite amount of thoughts. All of which, if I were to write them down, would create an endless stream of nonsense and increasingly befuddling sentences strung together by one common factor. That factor is simply the fact that they are all spawned within a spontaneous mass of nerve and electrical impulses trapped in a bone cage. How this mass of seemingly random pink tissue can function in such an incredible fashion can only attest to the incredible power of my, our omnipotent creator, the almighty God. Honestly, simply glance around you at the world, and think about how all the creatures and plants and organic substances work together. How in the world could that just.. happen? Look at your own body. Look at how the very substance of your body screams out "I'm not a random occurrence luckily spawned out of some primordial ooze by the very fortune of happenstance." It's utterly impossible.
I guess that's the first and most important thing you need to know about me. I'm a Bible-believing, Almighty God worshiping sinner rescued from my inevitable fate by the love of Someone who never stops loving me. I'm probably offending most of you. Your opinion of me has most likely changed from.. "Hmm, the first few lines of this are increasingly interesting" to "*Scoff* She's one of those hateful, judgmental, hypocritical Christians who probably is going to try and convert me to her religion." And while it's true that I would wish that you would be able to know the security and comfort I find in Jesus, I can't change your mind on my own. So I would hope that through my writing maybe you can see that I'm not a judgmental, hateful person, and that perhaps you could change the tainted connotation you attach to the word "Christian." So please, anonymous, stay tuned.
So another thing you might like to understand about me are the principles of my personality. Usually you can tell by one's body language, clothes, initial conversation, what kind of personality they have. However, with this unique form of interaction, you probably don't have any idea what kind of person I am. So far you know that I like to write, and that I'm a Christian. Also you have probably noticed that sometimes I get off track and as shown in the first paragraph of this entry I have a problem focusing. I sometimes think that I have a slight case of ADD, however, I try my best. Anyway, back to my personality. I'm a very ambitious person. I have huge goals for my life. I'm in a constant "Go-Getting" mode and it's very hard to shut it off. I want to be constantly busy. It's hard for me to just relax. Even if I'm watching Netflix and sipping water on my bed I'm thinking about a million things. I'm never "in the moment" and I know that there's a problem there. This bottled up ambition results in a lot of being unsatisfied. There's a fine line between being unsatisfied and being complacent. I haven't learned to walk it. Maybe I've gotten a foot or two up on top of it, however, in seconds I fall back into this pattern of hating where I am and what I'm doing. It terrifies me that I might be taking days for granted.
Recently I had a life-threatening bout of anaphylaxis. I went into shock, my blood pressure dropping critically low, and I was legitimately afraid for my life. What if I were alone that day. What if that happened when I was all by myself. I passed out twice and while I was out my dad called 911. I wouldn't have been able to get to a phone, and I'm legitimately 100 percent sure that I would have died. If it weren't for God's grace and provision, I would not be writing this. There again I go, mentioning God. "She's so focused on God. It wasn't God. It was just being in the right place at the right time." You might be saying that. Here's a quote for you. “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” -C.S. Lewis
Yes, I'm going to mention God because being a christian not only affects my religious and political views, but the way I see every aspect of life. I don't view anything as "Karma" because I'm so undeserving of any good karma in my life that that's utterly impossible.
I don't know the point exactly I'm trying to get across in this entry. I figured I would tell you, anonymous, about every aspect of my life. What I do, where I go to school, my plans for college, etc. However, I guess I've simply displayed how Christ is the center of my life. How even when I'm afraid I'm taking my life for granted, God reminds me how precious it is. How when I'm so confused and cannot focus, God helps me to be calm in the midst of the storm that is my thoughts. How my random string of nonsense thoughts simply attests to the fact that I cannot be a random happening. How its incredible that I have the ability to write this right now. So that's 90 percent of who I am. Perhaps in following entries I'll be able to uncover other abstract facts that make up the rest of who exactly it is that's writing these thoughts.
Maybe you'll stay tuned. Maybe not.
I'm writing to tell you about myself. My life. My decisions. My choices and the consequences thereof. The problem is that I have an infinite amount of thoughts. All of which, if I were to write them down, would create an endless stream of nonsense and increasingly befuddling sentences strung together by one common factor. That factor is simply the fact that they are all spawned within a spontaneous mass of nerve and electrical impulses trapped in a bone cage. How this mass of seemingly random pink tissue can function in such an incredible fashion can only attest to the incredible power of my, our omnipotent creator, the almighty God. Honestly, simply glance around you at the world, and think about how all the creatures and plants and organic substances work together. How in the world could that just.. happen? Look at your own body. Look at how the very substance of your body screams out "I'm not a random occurrence luckily spawned out of some primordial ooze by the very fortune of happenstance." It's utterly impossible.
I guess that's the first and most important thing you need to know about me. I'm a Bible-believing, Almighty God worshiping sinner rescued from my inevitable fate by the love of Someone who never stops loving me. I'm probably offending most of you. Your opinion of me has most likely changed from.. "Hmm, the first few lines of this are increasingly interesting" to "*Scoff* She's one of those hateful, judgmental, hypocritical Christians who probably is going to try and convert me to her religion." And while it's true that I would wish that you would be able to know the security and comfort I find in Jesus, I can't change your mind on my own. So I would hope that through my writing maybe you can see that I'm not a judgmental, hateful person, and that perhaps you could change the tainted connotation you attach to the word "Christian." So please, anonymous, stay tuned.
So another thing you might like to understand about me are the principles of my personality. Usually you can tell by one's body language, clothes, initial conversation, what kind of personality they have. However, with this unique form of interaction, you probably don't have any idea what kind of person I am. So far you know that I like to write, and that I'm a Christian. Also you have probably noticed that sometimes I get off track and as shown in the first paragraph of this entry I have a problem focusing. I sometimes think that I have a slight case of ADD, however, I try my best. Anyway, back to my personality. I'm a very ambitious person. I have huge goals for my life. I'm in a constant "Go-Getting" mode and it's very hard to shut it off. I want to be constantly busy. It's hard for me to just relax. Even if I'm watching Netflix and sipping water on my bed I'm thinking about a million things. I'm never "in the moment" and I know that there's a problem there. This bottled up ambition results in a lot of being unsatisfied. There's a fine line between being unsatisfied and being complacent. I haven't learned to walk it. Maybe I've gotten a foot or two up on top of it, however, in seconds I fall back into this pattern of hating where I am and what I'm doing. It terrifies me that I might be taking days for granted.
Recently I had a life-threatening bout of anaphylaxis. I went into shock, my blood pressure dropping critically low, and I was legitimately afraid for my life. What if I were alone that day. What if that happened when I was all by myself. I passed out twice and while I was out my dad called 911. I wouldn't have been able to get to a phone, and I'm legitimately 100 percent sure that I would have died. If it weren't for God's grace and provision, I would not be writing this. There again I go, mentioning God. "She's so focused on God. It wasn't God. It was just being in the right place at the right time." You might be saying that. Here's a quote for you. “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” -C.S. Lewis
Yes, I'm going to mention God because being a christian not only affects my religious and political views, but the way I see every aspect of life. I don't view anything as "Karma" because I'm so undeserving of any good karma in my life that that's utterly impossible.
I don't know the point exactly I'm trying to get across in this entry. I figured I would tell you, anonymous, about every aspect of my life. What I do, where I go to school, my plans for college, etc. However, I guess I've simply displayed how Christ is the center of my life. How even when I'm afraid I'm taking my life for granted, God reminds me how precious it is. How when I'm so confused and cannot focus, God helps me to be calm in the midst of the storm that is my thoughts. How my random string of nonsense thoughts simply attests to the fact that I cannot be a random happening. How its incredible that I have the ability to write this right now. So that's 90 percent of who I am. Perhaps in following entries I'll be able to uncover other abstract facts that make up the rest of who exactly it is that's writing these thoughts.
Maybe you'll stay tuned. Maybe not.
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