Sometimes it's really hard to be the "ugly friend."

Sometimes I want to hide under my covers and never come out...perhaps just disappear altogether. Sometimes I wish I didn't exist. Sometimes I don't want to keep living. But that's not my choice to make. So I do keep living. I keep getting up everyday. Sometimes it seems like its getting harder and harder. Sometimes I wonder what's happening to me, who I'm becoming. Because I don't really recognize it. It feels like I'm losing myself. Losing a grip on reality. Every now and then I look around and realize that this is real life. This is all really happening. I really am alive. And then I become afraid. I become afraid and want to hide and want to not be alive. It feels like so much pressure. This is the only life I get and I have to make something out of it. I have to do it right or it's wasted. And if it's wasted, it's not like that doesn't matter. It means I've let God down, and I don't want to do that. But everyday I live like I'm living now, I feel like I'm letting Him down anyway. And that's when I want to quit again. Call me a loser, call me a punk, but that's how I feel. I feel like life is too hard and I just want to hide. Hide away and disappear. But I can't. So I keep going, but I don't enjoy it. Sometimes I'm sad. Sometimes I'm very sad. And discouraged. Sometimes I want to cry. Other times I don't feel anything at all. Just empty. But I'm a Christian. I'm not supposed to feel empty...or sad. If I do, that means I'm doing something wrong. I'm probably not praying enough. Or something. It's not that I don't take it seriously. I just honestly don't know what to do anymore. The things people tell me almost seem to mean nothing at all. Everything feels dark and empty and sad. Everywhere I look in my life, I see pain and bad memories. I'm sure it's not as ugly as I'm seeing it to be. I'm sure there's some sort of filter that all my vision is passing through right now. But that's what I see, and so that is how I feel.

I just had the very comforting thought that "I am not a mystery" to God. Even if I don't know what's going on with me, He does. I'm not lost. I'm very much found and seen.

(Was listening to the song "Mended" by Watermark)

I think I may have realized what's been wrong with me. I'm searching for God and don't feel like I've found Him. I keep searching in the quiet places- in the woods, on walks, etc. I do believe we can learn about God from being in nature, but if we want to see His face, to know Him, I believe I can find it in the faces of the poor, the sick, the widow, the orphan, the prisoner, the hungry, and the thirsty. I've been so discouraged because I feel like I can't find God. But maybe I've been looking in the wrong places.

I guess it makes sense that we should only expect to receive those things we ask from God that He has already promised us. At first, that sounds weird to me, like why? But when I think about it, if He is good and every good thing comes from Him, then the only way to ask for something that is good is to ask for something He's promised. There's nothing He's promised that isn't good. And nothing that's good that He hasn't promised....I think? That does at least help it make more sense. Sometimes I think it will build my faith if I get the things I ask Him for, but many of those things aren't things He's promised (directly or indirectly) or that are in His Will. When I don't get those things, it challenges my faith. But maybe the problem really is that I'm not asking for the things I'm supposed to be asking for or that I am asking things I shouldn't. I have heard something like that before. Maybe I need to change what I'm asking.

Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead...

My heart is heavy tonight. I'm thinking about the events that transpired now almost 4 months ago when I lost one friendship and worked really hard to save another. I'm thinking about the pain and disappointment that led up to that point and about the process that followed. I'm thinking of how my heart ached then and remarking at how little that ache has subsided over these few months. I'm also thinking of how she hurts and how this situation really isn't behind us yet. Basically, I'm thinking of heartbreak.

I'm wondering if and when these wounds will finally heal. I'm wondering if that process has begun at all for him. I'm wondering if he still thinks of us- still thinks of me- or if I've faded into the background of his very full life. I wonder, I hope, I wish. I wish it could all just go away, somehow miraculously cure itself. I almost wish we'd never met- not because I don't value his friendship, but because it's hard for me to believe that we're all better off having been left with this much pain.

This post is somewhat a response to an encouragement to write tonight. I thought about it. If I did, I wasn't planning to write about this. I was planning to write about my latest spiritual wrestlings and what God may or may not be teaching me. I was planning to process "aloud" and try to find some clarity. But then, the conversation shifted and, for the first time in months, we talked about this. We revisited the heartbreak and I felt the pain almost as poignantly as I did months ago. Her face a window to her heart, I looked and knew she was feeling it too. Pondering over it tonight and reviewing those last couple of weeks, for the first time in a long time, I felt like I had something to write about.

I guess it is getting better. I don't cry about it anymore. But every time I think of it, my heart cringes and it feels like someone is twisting some invisible knife inside me. It still brings up feelings of inadequacy and other things I'll choose not to mention. It makes me sad, but it doesn't completely shut me down. It used to shut me down. For the two months or so leading up to the final decision, the pain was pretty much all I could think about. In the weeks and first couple of months following, I tried not to think about it much at all. But lately I've been revisiting the situation as if immersing myself in the feelings again will somehow help the healing process. I don't know, maybe it will. In a strange way, it feels good to go there again- the same way it feels good to clean a wound or remove a splinter. Not pleasant, but good. I think I never really processed the emotion following the final decision; I was so focused on wanting to move on in my friendship with her. But it never went away, and I'm reminded of what's been left unprocessed every time I feel that knife twist. I think the "good" I feel is me finally letting myself express emotion about this whole thing. For so long, I felt like I wasn't supposed to do that.

I do hope eventually to write about everything else that's going on- all the stuff I was planning to write about before the last part of that conversation happened. However, this is what was heaviest on my heart tonight, so this is what I shared. I just hope it doesn't continue to take center stage because no matter how it feels, it's not the most important part of my life. There's only One who can heal this and all other wounds. He's the One I really need.