I just had an epiphany. Thinking about how life is, how life was, how life could be and how life probably will be, I hit upon something: my life goes into these pretty random sine waves of good and bad, and I've felt like if I'm not on the high end of the wave -- feeling completely connected to God, totally in love with Jesus, doing exactly what I feel is right -- life feels like it's wrong somehow, like I shouldn't be here, like I should be trying harder to stay in line with Jesus or else I'm going to go off the deep end by default.
Excuse the language, but damn, how long has that been there?
What brought this to my mind was this feeling that the low points in my life are just in-betweens for the moments that God is close and life is right. But, I thought, doesn't that mean that I'm basically saying that most of my life is invalid? If life isn't life unless everything's perfect, then...does that mean that I'm just a walking ghost, apart from those few precious moments? Does it mean that God really isn't around unless I feel as if he's beside me?
Wow. I actually believe that.
No. Never. I wonder how I bought into such a deadly lie.
Possibly because there's this thing among Christians, usually implied for the most part, that life should be a certain way, that unless we're spending most of our day with God, never getting angry, never looking at things we shouldn't, never ever being materialistic...then we're wrong, and that is bad. Which is true. But we've taken it much further: if life doesn't follow these guidelines, then not only are we wrong, but there's something wrong with us, and we should, we have to stop or else we're bad people.
Well...maybe not bad. Just not all there, poor things. Here's a three-week Bible study and a few sermons to set you right again. Read a chapter a day, and call me in the morning, pastor's orders.
I honestly don't know whether to burst out laughing or break down and cry. Is that what we think our goal in life is, to be perfect people and feel close to God? HAH.
But it makes perfect sense to our reasoning minds. "This is completely right, and therefore everything that is not is wrong and must be avoided." 1 + 1 = 2, right?
There are two problems with this thought, though. One, Jesus never said "I am with you as long as you do everything you're supposed to and don't do things you're not supposed to do." Two, most of our lives is lived in this less-than-perfect place, the dreadful In-Between. But is it really dreadful, or are we just going about this all wrong? Maybe the whole point is that God's always with us (just like he said), even when we're farthest from him. Especially when we're farthest from him.
Woah...I'm going about my life all wrong. All of a sudden it's perfectly clear that what I've been doing is trying to lift my entire life up to Jesus's level. Might as well have been trying to lift the crust of the world. But in my attempt to bench-press a freight train, I forgot the obvious. Jesus comes down into our lives, not the other way around. And I slap myself in the face and laugh. Oh, what a wonderful God we serve!
But I've heard this before, and sometimes it still doesn't help, because one thing is left out: when life is at its lowest and God feels like a distant memory, Jesus is still within reach. Within reach, right now. Not if I can just get my life in order a little bit, not just if I can get myself to read my Bible a bit more every day, not just if I remember to pray before going to bed. Right now.
While I'm squandering my time avoiding what needs to be done, instead just doing whatever I feel like because it keeps me entertained and distances me from my pain and weakness, and while my thoughts are going where I know they shouldn't but I can't control myself, and while I'm so utterly despairing of love and of life, he's right here. So-close-I-can-touch-him here. And he doesn't care that I've sinned, and that I couldn't be further from the truth. He's still here.
It's so utterly freeing to realize that I don't have to lift my life up to the "good Christian" standard when I can barely even stand. I don't. He's here. Life's not a signal tower you have to climb up to get a connection to God, because he's right here, right now, when you're in pain, when you literally hate him for the way life is turning out, when you can't take another step because the sadness is so heavy.
He's right here.
Wow. I mean...wow. Really?
Just goes to show how hard it is for me to take God at his word, I guess. But he's taken that into account already.
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