A Little January

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.