Giving Thanks

I've spent far too long thinking about myself--my dreams, my whims, my wishes, my brokenness, my struggles.. Everything about me and what is going on in my heart and life. It's a paradox, really, if you think about it long enough. I try to figure myself out and work through all my struggles by both writing and thinking, but the fullest healing comes when I forget about myself and think instead of other people and how I can bless their lives. My contentment blooms when my heart is thankful--not just to and for those who love and care for me, but also when I learn to say thank you for the hard things, because those things are what mold me into becoming truly beautiful.
Life and living is such a mystery and enigma to me. Whenever I think that I've got something all worked out inside my mind my perspective is shattered and my dreams either broken or enlarged. There is a passage in the Bible, I can't think of where it is at the moment, that likens people to lumps of clay being worked by the potter's hands. God is the potter, and I am the clay.
God can't make me into a beautiful vessel unless I am soft to His touch and His will, and when I become hard, sometimes He has to break me. And then I fall into those lowest ebbs of tide and into the deepest darkest valleys and I have to choke out His name. I choke out His name and He brings me light. God, in His infinite wisdom, has given each and every one of us a free will to choose to either be soft to His touch and love, or to turn away in defiance and self-love. And for me, Thanksgiving is a call to return to His arms and His love in reverent thankfulness, remembering not only what He has done for us on the cross, but also what He continues to do each and every moment of our lives. Though my sin and selfishness blinds me to His grace and all His gifts, He has made a way for me to be renewed and made whole again.
For His mercies are new every morning.
And though my stubborn and foolish heart may turn its back on His face day after day, His arms never stop reaching out to me. For though I am faithless, He is faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.

I need to take more time to be thankful.

Becoming New

I'm a bad-weather writer.
It seems as if words will only spill from my heart when I feel some pain, or sadness, or loneliness. Makes for a depressing read, I know. It's hard to look happy when you're always sad. Something I've learned over my few years is that the more I do for myself the sadder I become, just like the longer I think about the things that I don't have, the more what I do have becomes ugly to my heart. Have you ever thought that, or is it just me?
I'm battling a strange emotion tonight--that of loss and disappointment so deep that I hardly know what to do with myself. I've had this feeling a few times before, but that doesn't make it any easier. There's a reason some of the most beautiful poetry written is about loss and loneliness--it just melds so easily in with the crashing of waves and dark nights, with empty beds and candlelight. Last year this time I was battling with losing my childhood home and the birthplace of everything good in me. Last spring marked a year since my "first love," in reality very foolish, buried a chunk of my heart in the warming earth, and this year, well, that's a story for another time.
I just can't talk about it now.
I go between phases of writing bad poetry that would make a proper English teacher cringe, to vomiting out raw emotions through my fingertips. And through it all I'm not quite sure I really know how to live with myself anymore. I'm not sure I've ever really dealt with any of my pain or my broken dreams... It's more like I've folded them all neatly and tucked them away in a box in the top of my closet, labeled warning: open at your own risk. So they stay there, and I try to forget them, but they never really ever go away. I can't burn them up, I can't send them away, and I can't ever completely forget them. I think the part that bothers me the most is that no one can have me without having all my boxes come along too.
I wish life wasn't this way. But I probably wouldn't be the person I am today without all those boxes hidden away. I wouldn't have the wisdom that comes with making mistakes, and I wouldn't have the marks that set my life apart from yours. Just because my world is different than yours doesn't mean that you are better than me, or I better than you. We were all born for a different purpose, and tonight I'm trying to find comfort in the fact that maybe I couldn't fulfill my purpose without all these scars that shape my heart and mold my path. Maybe, just maybe, it's just simply the process burning away the layers of dross to reveal that beautiful, pure gold that every man wishes he had--becoming something new and utterly precious with every heartache and every pang.

Ensnaring Apathy

I never in all my life thought that I'd feel this alone--this lonely. It's like I have no purpose, no plans, no future, no prospects. I suppose if I'm honest these are just feelings talking and in reality they're rubbish, but still, they're here, inside my heart. I can't even begin to describe the way it eats at my heart and mind until I realize that my hands are trembling and my stomach is sick even while my face is stoic and I try to keep myself from crying. Some people say it's just the 20s stage and that everyone goes through it, but instead of bringing me comfort that knowledge just makes me feel more and more like I'm drowning--alone. And not just drowning, but drowning in water that is so cold that it has paralyzed me to the point that I can no longer struggle, but just let it come.
Without hope.
I wish I didn't have these feelings, these emotions.
I wish that I could wake up with a still heart instead of feeling like I'm missing something somewhere--someone. In this house alone so many days I rush around doing things that seem so important to my tired mind all the while knowing deep inside that nothing I do really makes any difference at all.
Instead of enjoying a cup of coffee in the cool fall air I find myself chugging a cup of coffee gone cold and I stay inside the house tinkering with things that don't matter, or searching for diy projects on Pinterest that I know deep down I really have no intention of doing. I spend too much time curling my hair or planning my outfit when I know that I'm not going to leave the house. I look at my face in the mirror and find myself despairing over a little acne or a few scars. I look at an unread book that is begging to be read but instead I flit around the house doing nothing that nourishes my soul.
What is this strange apathy that has crept into my heart and into the deepest recesses of my mind? My ability to retain knowledge or the memory of what happened last week is slipping away, and I feel it. I'm not being stretched. I'm not learning. I'm not writing. I'm not working. I'm not reading.
All I am is fading.
It's no wonder I feel so empty.
I feel so tired, and yet--I have no energy or ambition to do anything.
Even as I write these words my eyes are struggling to keep themselves open and my once-hot cup of Earl Grey tea is poised lukewarm in my hand.
What can I do to break this cycle? There must be a way--there must.