I know I've harped on all of this before, but it really is. Things couldn't be going any better for me at the moment on paper and I'm still discouraged and tired for a large portion of my waking hours. I still have trouble going to sleep at night and doing the things that I need to do just to have an organized life.
I have 4 splits coming out in a very short period of time, all with spectacular bands, I have at least two more albums worth of material written and ready to record, I've been doing a few interviews and getting featured by people I don't even know in parts of the world I never would have expected...
...and still, I get so wrapped up in despair I can hardly move.
I'm happily married, I have beautiful pets that want to just sit and be pet and hang out with me, more friends than I have time for, a great mentor, a nice house... Tons of books to read, tons of video games to play, food in the fridge, everything. I have everything I've ever wanted out of life and things continue to get better!
...and still, I sit for hours with my eyes closed and can't move, often electing to sleep during the useful hours of the day instead of working on the pile of work I have to complete. And I can't do anything about it, I'll sit around and cry and pray and still be completely unable to do even the simplest of tasks that I need to perform.
Some may call this laziness, I don't think that's the case. It's not laziness, I'm capable of massive amounts of work in a short time and my work is always better than most would expect... I think.
And although my prayer life is rich, and I pray all the time, and it's one of the most important if not the most important thing I do in my life, I'm terrible at praying for myself and laying my problems down at the Lord's feet. It's not that I have some sort of misplaced pride that I think I can handle everything myself, it's that I genuinely see my own problems as insignificant.
My niece died a couple of weeks ago and her parents are dealing with the grief and everything that entails, there are people starving and I'm a big fat man who regularly overeats due to stress or boredom or any other number of terrible reasons I could give, there are people who can't find places to live, jobs to work at, or even if they have those things they don't have enough money to maintain them. So why, when I have so much in my life to be thankful for, and I am thankful, do I still feel like laying down with my eyes closed and not moving?
I think it's important for us, not just Christians, but for everyone who deals with this sort of thing to be open and honest about it. The attitude that our faith just isn't enough, or that we don't pray enough, or that we're lazy just doesn't work as an explanation and doesn't come anywhere close to being a tool to deal with it or a solution. All the medication in the world may help a little (it does, sometimes) but ultimately there is a sickness that pervades most humans' experience.
Thank God for life, even if we have to claw our fingers in the dirt and scream into the soil to drag ourselves through it. Something with the heights of beauty we've been given as a gift to perceive can't truly be seen if we don't have depths of personal torture to compare it to. It's just particularly hard when even the beauty of the entire universe can't be seen because our eyes are closed in silence, wishing for all of it to just leave us alone.
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