What Is Wrong With Me?

OK, it’s a rhetorical question.  I don’t expect anyone to have the answer, or if they did, I probably wouldn’t like the answer.  I’ve struggled mightily in the last few months in virtually every respect. 

• My running has been awful, I struggle to make it five or six miles at the moment, my legs are completely dead, they have nothing in them.
• I have writer's block, I've found nothing interesting to write about since my last blog post about six months ago.
• My classes at GGC this past semester were probably the worst I have had in my four years there.  I can’t blame my students, I could blame the weather, we lost several class days due to the weather, but it was more than that.  I wasn’t at the top of my game.
• My faith is lukewarm.  I still believe in God, I still love Jesus Christ and am so thankful daily for what He did for all of us, but I’ve lost the passion, I don’t get up each day excited to listen to my praise music when I run, and worse, I really don’t get excited each Sunday to go to church.  I could blame my church for some of the changes that have taken place over the last year or so, but it’s not the church, it’s me.
• Worst of all, I’ve lost my compassion for my fellow man.  OK, maybe that’s an overstatement, I’m just not where I was or where I want to be.
• To summarize, I’m barren, I’m a wasteland, I’m broken right now.  

Now that I’ve thoroughly depressed everyone, including myself, let me just say, this isn’t the end of the world.  I can, and will, get through this.  And to be clear, no one should feel sorry for me, and that’s the last thing I want.  As I’ve noted, I have an incredible life, there are very few who have been blessed with the gifts I’ve been given, I have no reason to be in this wasteland, but it’s where I reside right now.  And I really don’t need any help, there is only one person (with God’s help) that can fix this, and it’s me. 

Last year when we were going through the worst year of our lives, I remember reading in one of the books we used for small groups about prisoners of war, who struggled after being freed because they had gained such an incredible closeness with God during the captivity.  They couldn’t recreate that after they achieved freedom, the closeness with God had dissipated.  While I would never demean what prisoners of war went through by comparing our situation to theirs, we went through a deep crisis last year, and through that, I/we grew very close to God. 

So why in the world did He move away this year when we started recovering?  Of course, I’m joking, as those Hallmark cards or pictures always show, God never moves away from us, we move away from Him.  Believe me, it’s not been intentional, I didn’t set out to separate myself from God, but there is no doubt, I have. 

So is all hope lost?  So am I fixable?  As people at work know, my favorite saying is “beats the shit out of me.”  I do have faith though, I haven’t lost my faith.  I’m fairly confident, my body will heal.  I think at some point, my writer’s block will disappear, and the words will flow again.  I’m taking a much-needed break from teaching this summer, I think this last semester kicked my ass, and I need some time to re-energize and remember why I love to teach so much.  The faith side, the passion, the compassion?  I have a great deal of confidence in God.  While this whole experience has been disconcerting, I’ve spent many days, saying to myself and to anyone in earshot, “what is wrong with me?”, I do have a great deal of confidence that God has a plan, no idea what the plan is, but He has a plan.  Last week when I asked this question to Allen Hoskyn, our Associate Pastor, he gave me an unbelievably inspiring answer.  Essentially to paraphrase, for us to reach a deeper intimacy with God, we need to reach a deeper level of emptiness.  As Allen noted, it’s painful and disorienting to go on an unknown journey, but it’s necessary.  I sure hope he’s right.

So as we meet on this journey that we are all on, I ask you to have a little patience with me at the moment.  Please don’t pity me, please don’t look down upon me for not starting each day with that fire in my heart and belly that anyone with the gifts I’ve been given should have.  I am not who I was, I am not who I want to be, and I’m not who I should be right now.  But, at some point, I will be back, and I do believe, I’ll be better than ever.  I can fix myself, with God’s help, and I can be the man that God wants me to be.

Epilogue:  As the one or two of you who read my blog posts know, I love prologues and epilogues.  I sent this to John Ey, one of my most trusted advisors, and he said, “it sounds like you’re depressed”.  To be honest, while it may sound that way, I’m really not, or at least I don’t believe I am.  I’m waiting for God, and I don’t mean I’m waiting for Him to fix me, I’m waiting to see what direction He will take me.  I love the line from Hillsong United’s Desert Song, “I know I’m filled to be emptied again, the seeds I’ve received I will sow”.  In my case, I’ve been emptied to be filled again, or maybe I’m not quite empty yet, but I know, I will be filled again.  It’s just a matter of when.