You are a beautiful mess

What is wrong with me lately? I am so uninspired to write anything worth a bean! When I think, at last! I have something important to say! I begin to type or jot things down in my notebook and it feels just like a thousand things I have written and said before. It totally lacks any originality, or validity. It captures a sense of blandness and discontentment that I may or may not even being feeling. I sound like a broken record! You miss all of my passionate emotions where, in the bathroom I silently scream until my face is red from frustration and anger at myself, the world around me, my lack of love, lack of peace, lack of understanding and compassion or sincerity towards my fellow man. I fail to express the days that blend one in to the other, all smearing like paint that turns into pools of brown and gray are more often that not, and end up sounding like Pollyanna, ever hopeful, ever cheery! But I am not! No! I am an angry girl with too many thoughts all of the time, and I am so weary of myself sometimes that I could simply die. But I do not say this. No, in order to keep people from thinking I am a negative bore hounding for pity from all of you, which I would not be, but it would come across like this no matter what...self pity is such an ugly trait after all....I spew a rainbow of words containing life and hope, and this all all good and well, but it is not honest. I want to be honest with you. I want to be honest with myself most of all, and that will trickle down into everything I do and onto everyone I meet. 

So, life is dull sometimes and drags on until you look in the mirror and realize your reflection is no longer a girl with long, shining hair and naiive eyes filled with dreams of tomorrows that might possibly come, but your eyes now shift with the lackluster suspicion that maybe life will always be mediocre and unfulfilled, framed in crows feet and smile lines. Quite possibly, and you are no longer afraid of this, life might serve you a large helping of sorrow and disappointments, riddled with anxiety or disease. You are critical. Jaded. Getting older. Supposedly wiser. Like Adam and Eve in the garden, you feel naked and long to be clothed. And so you are.Clothed in tattered, threadbare armor.  Sometimes you may even feel the sharp truth of the curse like a bitter wind on your skin. These are the things I think about but do not share because I have branded myself the speaker of kind words to the public, words of hope. But it is not how I feel often. I struggle with depression one day and then I dig myself out with light and love and the beauty of nature and comfort of family and God. Who of us do not struggle with depression on occasion in a broken world where so much darkness dwells, but also so much good? I don't think I could relate to you if you said you never wished to be absent from this earth because of the pain it brings in life. Once in awhile at least.

SO my heart longs desperately for heaven, a better world, a better home, my true home. But I do not dream of death or suicide. I dream of life still. I chase after the silver edge of the cloud which seems to always be there, a constant companion. I always say, how would the brighter colors be bright without the shadowy brush stokes to contrast them? You cannot have the brightness of day without the closing of the eyes to dark night. So there is the certainty of bad against good, the struggle of sadness to joy. We are human! Will we not feel human emotions and have terrible days that are so full of failure you may not even want to get out of bed the next day because you feel as if you have completely blown it? And then there is always a second and third and hundredth chance at repairing the breach and making lemonade from lemons. Those of us who believe, who have faith in a God we cannot see but trust is there, we have the hope of heaven. We know that this world is but a shadow of the things to come when we die. Sometimes I wonder what it feels like to NOT have that hope. Do you have less depression of this world, because you are so desperately attempting to make this one shot so well-lived? I think there is balance needed. I know we as believers are not supposed to bide our time counting the days we have left, only dreaming of the next and better world. We are meant to live each day here to the fullest, speaking of His saving grace, and looking at how God speaks to us in His creation..in the birds song, the fresh dew on the mouth of a flower, the curve of a child's cheek, the eyes that watch us, the tenderness of new leaves on a branch in spring, baby birds learning to fly out of the nest, a road that goes somewhere you've never been, looking at this day like an adventure to be lived, food tasted, faces kissed, arms held out to the lonely, washing each other's feet in servitude. But somedays are shit. And there is no way around it. Thankfulness changes so much. When I feel dark and angry and crabby and I'm ugly to be around, I sometimes remember to be thankful. To be silent and pray. To seek the peace I know is ALWAYS extended to me, but so easy to turn my back on. But sometimes I don't. Sometimes I waste an entire day indulging in the bread of idleness and despair. And God's grace is on those days too. I hope my blog today helps someone to know that being real and transparent can sometimes look messy, but it is truth, and honesty is always the best in my book. Bless you today. May you find beauty, and refuge in His big, outstretched arms of grace and love, It never ends, even when you feel lost and alone and bored and ugly. You are beautiful, and precious, and special, and your life is the only one of its kind, so live it fully. Even the shitty days.