I have an image of myself. I want to be this super cool guy with an awesome, beautiful girlfriend. I want to have so many friends that I have to decline requests to hang out. I love God but my love for my personal image is equally important to me. I want people to hold high respect for me and in return I will show them the love of God. This image of me doesn’t struggle with anxiety or minor depression. He doesn’t think the worst of situations because he is confident that it will work out his way. He comes from a perfect dysfunctional family but one that is publically loved and known. He’s the guy who declined offers as prom dates to go alone and not hurt feelings, but danced with them and the prettiest girls there. He’s a rock star and an artist. Everyone loves his ideas and dreams. They encourage him and love him, but he is missing something more important than all of this because I’m creating him because I don’t find myself good enough for myself.
God has an image of me. He loves me more than any scale, tape measure, or calculator can measure. An infinite amount of galactic spaces cant tip that scale. He loves me more than anything can describe with words, money, or shiny new gadgets. Yet this image still is dreaming of himself as someone different when he has it all. The same power that created the stars, planets, dinosaurs, Chuck Norris, and Mount Everest created me. Why? I wonder why God would waste clay on me? Love. Really? Love…the thing I’ve ben searching for my whole life through failures of relationships and popularity. Something I want so much is being rejected by my shields I put made out of personal wants and desires. God’s image of me never changes. I’ve been loved since the beginning. Even when Adam and Eve took the apple and betrayed this love. He loved me through the flood that He created to destroy the sinful world. He loved me through the wars, disease, and pains of living. When I blamed Him for everything that was wrong with my life His only response was loving me. Through heartbreak He tried talking to me. When I needed Him most I pushed Him farther away. When I smoked weed and got drunk I laughed in His face. A God who I’ve never seen, heard, or felt present in my life. A God who couldn’t top the feeling of a high or drunkenness. A lie.
I have to question myself. Why did I not feel good enough for myself? I feel it was a result of always keeping things private. I associated myself with others who also felt they had to impress people. Truth was I was only lying to myself. I was attempting to fill a void too large for any image of myself. Only God could cap that gap. Once I let Him I saw how others felt inadequate. I felt His love solving all the problems in my life, not only fixing myself but also streaming through me. I felt like a cup being overflowed with water and just having to find place for all of this extra love. How was I so ignorant of this power before? Truth is, His love is the everlasting high. Something that smoking weed was trying to replace but only causing harm. Alcohol gave me the satisfaction of changing myself, but in the end it made me sick of who I was pretending to be. Kind of ironic how Gods love changed me as well. I see my old image as a monster in the hands of Satan. Something God hadn’t created. It was the definition of darkness. And the real truth was that who I was, was actually the false image I had given myself. The image God gave me I had locked away. This was why I never felt loved. My minor depression took hold because of this. The part of me that could feel this love was separated from my mind of the modern world. When I rejected Gods love I felt the darkness covering me. I really was alone and I wasn’t the real image God had given me. If I was the person who God intended to be I would have never felt alone. I blamed others but it was my own fault for being someone I wasn’t.
My biggest killer now is anxiety. I want things to be perfect. I don’t like being rejected. I’ve found the things that trigger this. Girls and family, but both in different kinds of anxiety. With girls that I get attracted to and become interested in I expose my emotions differently. When things don’t work out as I expected I panic. I don’t think she likes me. I assume she is ignoring me. She would rather spend her time with another guy. My heart sinks into my gut and I sit quietly while my mind explodes in panicky thoughts. I don’t want to do anything when it happens. I act sad but don’t ever bring it to light in conversations. Sometimes I even fake sick. With family it’s more of stressful anxiety. Constant arguing annoys me greatly. I’ve been a lazy kid my whole life. When mom asked me to do something I wined and complained rather than doing it and helping out. Its anxiety I've brought upon myself but still relate it to my household. It pains me to say this honestly but I don’t like to go home. I really only miss my dog. This breaks my heart. I want to have a stronger relationship with my family. I feel more mature but I’m scared of the anxiety that is triggered by being home. This is what I’m currently battling.
Both of these anxieties are because I’ve valued my time more than God. I want to find an awesome girl who I can settle down with but I haven’t listened to what God was saying. Just recently have I opened my heart to what God is directing me towards and I feel I am on the right track of beating the anxiety with girls. Also with the anxiety at home I have valued my own time more than my family that God has blessed me with. The physical reason I'm here writing this. I love my family and I know its normal to be slightly dysfunctional. I think I'm just too selfish. I still have encounters with my created image of myself and the selfishness is because of that. The peace of heart and mind that the love of Christ brings erases all of my worries, anxieties, depression, and selfishness. I want to share this feeling with others. I want them to know that their struggles are human. But the force behind them are not of God but of this world and Satan’s claws. To be fully content with ones self can only be accomplished by fully succumbing to the infinite and embracing love of God. His love stretches my heart into infinity.
-Why should my struggles stay a secret? Especially
since the cure to them is the proof of God’s love…
No comments:
Post a Comment