Life has been a bit strange the past couple months: Graduation, Girls, Employment, Future, etc., etc. I can’t really explain all that’s going on, but I learned in a counseling class once about “stress points.” When you have high stress points, you have a higher chance of slipping into depression or some sort of psychological ailment.
I told one friend,
“I think where I’m at is not a point of trust or “out of God’s will”, but rather a point of impatience. I’m tired of living like a college kid. I’m tired of living with boys. I’m tired of being insignificant. I gave the last 8 years because I believe God has a purpose and now for what? Where is it?
I’m being shortsighted. I’m being impatient. I’m complaining. I’m dissatisfied and discontent. It’s immature and is teaching me who I really am deep down inside which is saddening, to say the least.”
My other friend whom I have been talking to responded to my remark:
“Dude…we are broken people, living in a broken world. We believe in a benevolent God, we believe in the Incarnation, but the true reality of that event and the true reality of that benevolence can not fully and completely be realized until the end… so we by grace try to persevere by Faith through the sacraments and the community around us. [emphasis mine]
But Life is hard so we do things to help us get by…we drink, we smoke, we dance, we pray, we rock, we sleep, we eat, we read our Bibles waiting for Jesus to talk us, we sing cool “praise” songs that make us feel better, etc., etc., etc. I drink, smoke, and pray. Others go to pink light churches. Sentimentalism…it’s a coping mechanism.”
I have been given a lot of counsel, advice, ponderings, from the wise and unwise. Most of it has been so overly simplistic, idealist, uneducated, just plain old bad advice, some of it just plain old sentimentalism (that spawned his sentimentalism comment). The picture my friend has painted is by far the most real “advice” I have received. Most of us want to “live” but only “survive.” I don’t know where I will end up, but I know where I would like to…
I told one friend,
“I think where I’m at is not a point of trust or “out of God’s will”, but rather a point of impatience. I’m tired of living like a college kid. I’m tired of living with boys. I’m tired of being insignificant. I gave the last 8 years because I believe God has a purpose and now for what? Where is it?
I’m being shortsighted. I’m being impatient. I’m complaining. I’m dissatisfied and discontent. It’s immature and is teaching me who I really am deep down inside which is saddening, to say the least.”
My other friend whom I have been talking to responded to my remark:
“Dude…we are broken people, living in a broken world. We believe in a benevolent God, we believe in the Incarnation, but the true reality of that event and the true reality of that benevolence can not fully and completely be realized until the end… so we by grace try to persevere by Faith through the sacraments and the community around us. [emphasis mine]
But Life is hard so we do things to help us get by…we drink, we smoke, we dance, we pray, we rock, we sleep, we eat, we read our Bibles waiting for Jesus to talk us, we sing cool “praise” songs that make us feel better, etc., etc., etc. I drink, smoke, and pray. Others go to pink light churches. Sentimentalism…it’s a coping mechanism.”I have been given a lot of counsel, advice, ponderings, from the wise and unwise. Most of it has been so overly simplistic, idealist, uneducated, just plain old bad advice, some of it just plain old sentimentalism (that spawned his sentimentalism comment). The picture my friend has painted is by far the most real “advice” I have received. Most of us want to “live” but only “survive.” I don’t know where I will end up, but I know where I would like to…