I am a Christian. I love Jesus in a way I can not express in words. I owe my life, my entire life, my eternal life, to Jesus Christ, to the God of the cosmos, and it is such a weight off my shoulders to know I’m not the one who needs to control everything--I’m not the one ultimately in charge of my destiny. This is great freedom.
Except when I forget, and the weight of the world IS on my shoulders, and I can’t bear the heaviness of the world’s aches and cries and tears. And when conflict flares up in my life, I worry and worry. I let it eat at me like a voracious virus until it invades my mind and sculpts visions of a horrid future, slowly nibbling away at my sanity and kindness. I panic when I have to depend on people and they aren’t following through on my schedule. I believe the worst in some situations instead of the best, and I wonder if I’m wrong when I believe the best instead of the worst. I am not a pessimist, but I am an idealist, and sometimes idealists make pretty impressive pessimists, the worst kind, really.
Does this make me a bad Christian? Is God unhappy with me? Sometimes, I think it’s my responsibility to change myself, that God expects this of me. Now that I’m reflecting on it, I realize I think this quite a lot. Of course, when I ponder intellectually about it, I know that, theologically, this is very problematic. But sometimes it is so hard to get my heart to believe what my head knows.
I love Jesus more than anything. God constantly floors me with her grace and faithfulness. Also, sometimes I freak out about things. There are so many paradoxes in being human. Humanity is a bitch, and it is such a blessing.
