Joy

I'm looking out over a sea of green tree tops that modestly conceal the city below. The Cascade Mountains connect the jagged edge of the urban forest to the pale sky. Watching the mountains turn from light blue to purple and the sky dim, a new light in my heart rises.

The feeling that I had seen everything to see was stalking me from behind dark trees. I feared yesterday that I was doomed to walk a closed circuit through life. As that idea was invisibly bearing down on me from every direction like a poltergeist, suddenly newness emerged. The scenes of life were the same, but somehow they all looked and felt different today.

I'm in love with life today. I don't know how it is possible. It is the miracle of joy. I can only see ugly self reckoning ahead for me. With all my therapy, 12-stepping and journaling I'm seeking a path of pain. The excitement comes from a fundamental change in the foundation of my consciousness: Hope.

It's an ugly life, an ugly world and I'm alive in it. The numbness has passed and the pain is promising. The emptiness is gone. The fight is real, and the fight is now. I fear the worst thing that has ever happened to man is the feeling of insignificance. The fight is for me. The fight is for you. The fight is for all of us. The joy is seeing it and knowing that it is our fight.

Every human being will fight whether they know it or not. Misery is to pretend there is no battle. Some will make their fight to simply not know the truth. How can one live with all of this pain if there is no purpose for it? What utter denial and agony! To embrace the fight as a reality of life is to know joy.

I say, "This is my plight, I accept it and I will engage with a knowledge of purpose."

I am realizing the deep-seated nature of my issues. I'm unveiling my narcissism, self-righteousness, dishonesty, and the list goes on. I'm starting to be able to see the emotional weight of who I am and how fundamentally broken I am. There is million idiosyncrasies that I labeled as "normal" within the grace of my family context. I really thought I was pretty close to respectable and good. I have many people fooled as well. Or at least I thought I did. When I tear down the backdrop that society plays for my ego and I expose myself to God's reality I then see the immensity of my inadequacy. And I've just begun.

This ugliness is bigger than my ability to overcome it. I know this. I am overwhelmed by it. But somehow I am inspired above this defeat to say God is good, and in the midst of my suffering I will continue to proclaim it.

Read yesterday's posts for a contrast. Hallelujah!