damn little spider

i battle the extremes of hope – feeling either hopeful or hopeless – on a continual basis and it really wears on me. i find myself gravitating towards one and then the other. it’s random and it varies from situation to situation. and in some cases, i bounce back and forth in the very same situation. it occurs all of the time, but most often it occurs in the unknown – meaning that i’m asking my mind, heart, and spirit to fill in the blanks of those events or situations in my life that i have absolutely no clue about (but think that it would be useful to figure out both in advance and on my own). it’s stupid, very stupid. i wish that i could just latch on to one and discard the other because at the very least, it would seem consistent, and thus eliminate the battle. (at least that’s what i tell myself.) but it seems impossible. and it really makes no sense to think that a life of hopelessness is even an option when the alternative is a life filled with hope, right?

so, i’ve been thinking about this a lot and here is best way i know how to describe it. it’s as if i have a spider stuck in my body that continually spins a web and relentlessly moves around – back and forth, side to side, top to bottom – setting traps for me to deal with. at times i find myself avoiding the web, moving through the spaces that still exist as i enter into the world of healthy imagination. i can picture the wonderful possibilities that lie before me and with those images come a sense of hope that brings peace, understanding, and contentment. other times, i find myself stuck in the web, trying aimlessly to get free, but instead finding my own efforts to be making things worse rather than better. it is in this time of struggle that i find myself in the world of damaging assumptions. i can so easily picture the most negative scenarios that lead to a sense of hopelessness. and with this hopelessness comes confusion, resentment, and despair. two different worlds with two entirely different sets of feelings and emotions. i think that god would want me to live in the world that brings hope, but it’s so easy to fall into the world of hopelessness. why is it so easy to assume the worst – not only in others, but in myself as well? doesn’t the whole idea of hopelessness contradict the idea of faith in one’s life? isn’t faith supposed to provide hope? and if i have faith, why do i so often feel hopeless?

obviously, there is some kind of disconnect and i need to find it. but honestly, i’m not quite sure where to look. i feel disconnected all over sometimes. my mind feels disconnected at times. my heart feels disconnected at times. and even my spirit feels disconnected at times. the worst is when all three feel disconnected at the very same time. those times in my life are the worst in that i tend to retreat and try to carry every burden on my own. however, those times also force me to realize that i need help and push me into a deeper relationship with god. and that’s when the hope starts to return – clearing away the cobwebs that keep finding their way back into my life. it feels good to clear away those pesky cobwebs, but what really irritates me is that i never seem to get rid of the spider. sometimes it’s a thought. sometimes a feeling. sometimes a voice. i hate that little spider because it robs me of the life and greatness that god intended for me. damn that little spider. (this is where i silently count to ten.)

okay, so maybe those times aren’t as bad as they seem. (i can’t believe i’m saying that.) my instinct is to find the cause of my hopelessness and get rid of it so that i can live a life that is in a perpetual state of hope. it would feel so much better. but is that really the best thing for me? if my relationship with god grows deeper as a result of hopelessness, would it become stale and predictable if i continually lived in a state of hope? perhaps god wants me to enter into periodic times of hopelessness so that he can hold me and love me and speak to me. perhaps it’s the hopelessness that maintains the hopefulness in my relationship with god. and that would mean that i need to actually appreciate the role that hopelessness plays in my life, doesn’t it? hmmm, i’ll have to think about this a bit more.

shift in theology

i’ve been thinking a lot about life and how it can many times just plain suck. and then i’ve been thinking a lot about how i should be praying when i’m going through these times that are anything but enjoyable – when i’m unhappy, stressed out, lonely, feeling abandoned, feeling let down, sick to my stomach, etcetera, etcetera. i used to pray for god’s will to be done – often after i prayed for everything that i want – trying to be sensitive to the whole idea that what god has placed on my heart is both his will and what i want. i guess i still pray that way when the situation only involves me, but i’ve realized that as soon as it involves someone else, i can’t really pray that way anymore. sure, god can do anything that he wants to do and force his will to happen, but isn’t that outside of his character? he’s not going to make someone else (or me for that matter) do anything. he gives us free will to choose as we desire. so, even if i want god’s will to be done and am feeling like i know what that would be, someone else may or may not choose to succumb to his will – which means that if they choose to follow their own will instead of god’s, they not only mess things up for themselves, but they mess it up for me as well. and vice versa, that i have the power to mess things up for myself as well as others that i’m involved with (friends, family, coworkers, and many more). that sucks! the positive in all of this is that god can work in messy situations and he can clean up wherever and whenever we make them. i don’t know that i like any of this, but i do know that i’ve started to pray very differently. i’ve been praying that god speaks truth to people and reveals things so at least they are making choices and decisions with a full deck of cards. i’ve been praying for the holy spirit to prompt people – placing people, situations, thoughts, etcetera on their hearts – so that at the very least they have to acknowledge those things and decide what to do with them. well, those are my thoughts for the day. like i said, i don’t like them, but i think that i understand them.