Clarity - maybe - finally

My evening's gone sort of sideways from what was planned. Was hoping to get home early, blog & then run some errands. But flipped the order & so am just sitting down now to jot down some thoughts. Blogger seems to be unco-operative at present, so this may not make it onto the web until sometime later....

The advantage though of being a writer/creative is that a lot of the creative process happens in your head... so in the middle of all my shopping tonight, this blog entry has changed about 10 or 12 different times & what is listed here is much, much different than what it would've been if I'd sat down to write earlier in the day. Earlier in the night, it was all fuming & confusion.... now I'm actually pretty much at rest & feeling reasonably good about being me. Maybe it's just late & I'm tired from shopping/cleaning, but yeah, the angst is gone & I'm feeling free-er than I have in the last number of days.... I feel less hunted, less pursued by my fears & just more at peace....

.... the summary of it all (will maybe try to fill in details later, but this is abbreviated 'cause of the time of night): I live with the fear that deep down there is something wrong with me. That there is something unlovely & unlovable at the core of me & this leads to all kinds of other fears & neuroses. Ultimately, at the core of me (& maybe everyone) is a baby, child, teenager, adult who stands there asking "do you love me?" "do you want me?" And the fears & lies tell us/me that the answer will always, ever be 'no'....

.... and so, from living in this expectation, it's so easy to believe any voice that confirms the lies & so hard to believe any voice that speaks to the contrary.

Lately the struggle has been weeks of up & down emotions. The emotions have fluctuated wildly, even for me & I've been concerned that something's going wrong with me; that my tenuous grip on sanity is finally slipping... I've been looking at everything to figure out what's going wrong & how to fix it & I've been living in this fog, longing for clarity, but finding none... Got some stuff on Saturday night & thought I'd understood what was going on, but now I've got a completely different interpretation (which may still embrace the old thoughts, but that's for whenever the details get filled in)....

....the first real lift in this was Lisa's comments on my last blog post. I don't know what it is about me, maybe this is true for all people, or maybe just the needy ones, but there are moments where it changes everything when I realize that someone else (and especially people who I respect & whose journey I trust) is going through the same thing as I am. Suddenly I don't feel alone. I feel validated. I feel that I am somehow given permission to just 'be' instead of needing to fit in with my perceptions of what others consider 'normal' or 'together'.....

The second lift came 3/4 of the way through my day at work. Was listening to Skillet's new 'Comatose' album. I picked this up on my last visit (dual meaning there) to Christian Publications. I was mostly oblivious to the album, enjoying the crunchy guitars as I fought through sorting out scattered information in various spreadsheets. Part way through the album I hit this song:

Better Than Drugs - lyrics by John L. Cooper & Brian Howes
Feel your every heartbeat / Feel you on these empty nights / Calm the ache, stop the shakes / You clear my mind / You’re my escape / From this messed up place / ‘Cause you let me forget / You numb my pain / How can I tell you just all that you are / What you do to me

You’re better than drugs / your love is like wine / Feel you comin’ on so fast / Feel you comin’ to get me high / You’re better than drugs / addicted for life / Feel you comin’ on so fast / Feel you comin’ on to get me high

Feel you when I’m restless / Feel you when I cannot cope / You’re my addiction, my prescription, my antidote / You kill the poison / ease the suffering / calm the rage when I’m afraid / To feel again / How can I tell you just all that you are / What you do to me

You’re better than drugs / your love is like wine / Feel you comin’ on so fast / Feel you comin’ to get me high / You’re better than drugs / addicted for life / Feel you comin’ on so fast / Feel you comin’ on to get me high

Feel your every heartbeat / Feel you on these empty nights / You’re the strength of my life

You’re better than drugs / your love is like wine / Feel you comin’ on so fast / Feel you comin’ to get me high / You’re better than drugs / addicted for life / Feel you comin’ on so fast / Feel you comin’ on to get me high

I should hate this song. It's so much a 'poster child' song for so much of the christian ghetto/subculture. I mean, how often have we heard this message, "Jesus is better than drugs", "be high on life, not drugs", "Jesus can take away the pain".... there are so many empty platitudes thrown out there by Christian parents who are scared to death that they'll lose their kids to the big, bad world out there & they come up with these slogans in a hope that they'll make Jesus 'cooler' than the other subcultures found in the schools & society. Contemporary christian music & often times especially the 'alternative' Christian music is another example of this. The mass Christian marketing machine (which half the time is led by non-Christians) go, "Let's prey on the fear of Christian parents. Let's give their kids a band that sounds like a carbon copy of another 'secular' band, but they'll say 'Jesus' every three words instead of the f-word. And then let's charge twice as much for the CD 'cause they're a captive audience & sell the music in only Christian bookstores to help further consolidate our market share for this demographic & guarantee they'll keep coming back for more of the same schlock."

yeah, I'm not cynical at all, eh? & yeah, I maybe shouldn't be as cynical where Skillet is concerned. The fact that I bought the album shows that I at least kind of trust Skillet as a band with something to say. Every interview I hear with John Cooper I'm continually convinced that he is a really kind & genuine guy who really believes in what he's doing & does what he's doing to try to bring some kind of message of hope to hurting kids. This is a heart I can get behind & hope Skillet's music keeps getting out there for years to come & that good things come from it in spite of the things I despise with the Christian mass-marketing machines...

But again, this song should be the poster child for everything I despise with Christian media... but hearing the song today, I just started to weep & weep - full on tears & shaking, my shoulders slumping in exhaustion (again, another one of those awkward work crying moments). I've been tired today. Not enough sleep & really sore from skiing (my neck hurts - which I think is from the multiple falls I took on the hill). The stress of being afraid of losing my brain, the stress of being afraid of losing friendships has been weighing on me harder than I'd like to admit. And so the song speaks into the broken places & whispers, like Lisa's words, that I'm maybe more normal than I figure....

... my skin burns every time I hear Dar's words in the song "Teen for God" (see a number of posts below) about being a lightning rod, a radio station - about this place of where in giving yourself to God, you end up losing yourself & enter this near terrifying place where something else takes control.... the lines in the 'better than drugs' song about Jesus 'coming on so fast' has a similar effect - it's this place where you realize how much in love you maybe are & how much this removes your control of your own life, leaves you on this roller-coaster of unknowns where sanity & safety are never a guarantee & every moment is full of risk - this last bit sounds like my skiing experience - and yet (unlike skiing), it's something that gets (more or less) willingly submitted to.... all saints, all disciples sooner or later join with Peter in the heartbreaking confession of, "where else can we go?! only you have the words of eternal life"

The third & maybe final lift came in the Wal-mart parking lot after a few hours of shopping & writing & rewriting a blog entry in my head. I realized that the only thing significantly different about my emotional state lately was that I was having more happy moments & moments where the happiness/joy is approaching some near-ecstatic state (maybe not quite ecstasy, but pretty dang good). I've still got the random lows, the random moments of feeling lonely, empty, longing. The only difference is that now my 'ups' & so much more frequent & so much higher that it feels like I'm on a worse roller-coaster ride because the fluctuations are higher.

This is sort of good news... at least in my mind... I'm tempted to draw wave diagrams to explain, but yeah, we'll leave that... but yeah, I'm thinking that maybe this is a pretty good problem to have to deal with: I have to get used to being happy, really happy, more often... all in all, that's not a 'problem', that's a gift....

...and I just didn't see it until now...... so yeah, feeling pretty good about things right now...