i have made an art out of missing the point. it takes a lot of energy to keep living my days on purpose, a lot of focus to remember WHY things are important. when the weather is nice, and i am healthy, and my family is good, and my relationships are flowing, and i feel content...i feel like i don't need to pray. i feel like i don't need to write. i feel like i don't need to make sure i have alone time. those things stop feeling important, and i forget to stop and remember why they are. without fail, a few days later, i wake up feeling...not quite right. vaguely uneasy about something i can't put my finger on. it's the build up of small questions that i haven't taken to God, and the rising suspicion that a lot depends on me. it is...stress.

there is an ease about me when i am focused on the point, which is that God's eyes are on me and they are the ones that matter, but i am so easily pulled into other ideas. i start grading myself on how much other people like me, or how good my test scores are, or how well i am dressed, and there's so much bondage in that kind of self-evaluation. i start feeling pressured to make some kind of good performance so that i can feel good about myself. i start needing to have things my way to be happy. but damn, it's a bad lie, and thank God for pulling me out of it all the time.

if my life had a chorus between verses, i know this would be it. i'm always finding myself in some version of the same place, feeling lost and then found, finding that the truth is something i duck and then seek, over and over. it's always a relief to know that it is always there, though, and that every second is a chance for me to turn it all around, to grab the point with both hands as soon as i realize i've dropped it.

maybe that is an art, as well.

"When He talks of their losing their selves, He only means abandoning the clamor of self-will; once they have done that, He gives them back all their personality, and boasts that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever." - C.S. Lewis, "The Screwtape Letters"