the hiding place...

     it's probably altogether unnecessary and unwise for me to admit this, but i'm a bit of a stalker. xanga and facebook have sparked and fueled my vicarious lifestyle, but i've found that it's really the only kind of life i seem to have available to me at the moment. okay, perhaps not, but other people's lives are still infinitely more interesting than mine. i stumbled across one particularly introspective post this evening that could have been written by me. in fact, i think i'm about to write a few very similar things that this young man did (though i will probably take it in a slightly different direction), and i hope if he stumbles upon it that there would be no offense. this is simply from my perspetive.

     you've read it over and over again this semester, if in fact you've had the strength to submit yourself to the reading of such drivel, but it's been a tough time. i've (intentionally and not) limited many of the unhappier posts to general complaints or unsatisfactory comments on the nature of things, which i'm sure was all very boring and insanely redundant, but i was never really honest about them. unfortunately, i can't say that complete honesty will be used now--such a thing would probably be more than foolish--but at least i won't lie to you (if i've lost your attention already, feel free to exit without any risk of hurt feelings). anyway, particularly this year, i've been made increasingly aware of how different and how lost and disconnected i am. relationships that i honestly thought were rich and deep and dynamic have proven to be thin and shallow and stagnant. i can honestly say that, with the exception of my nearly-dysfunctional family, i really don't know who my friends are. one that i thought was closer than others has even admitted to me that they were trying to push me away and keep me at a distance. on top of this, and perhaps magnified by it, it has truly been a difficult semester. i have had so much work to do that most of it is never finished on time, if at all. and then there's the financial issues. i haven't had a decent paycheck in over a month simply because they stopped scheduling me. oh, wait, i worked one shift (four hours) the week before last. i've seriously been going crazy. and because i'm just stupid, probaby, i've completely allowed my relationship with Jesus to just slip away almost entirely. i barely pray anymore, and when i do it's mechanical and unfeeling. it's hard not to think that all of this is some sort of punishment. that old matt west song that i've quoted on here a million times suddenly comes to mind--"well all my friends are gone now, and all my money's gone now, and all my pride has gone now, but if what you say is true now--this will be my finest hour." man, that's hard to trust. but what else have i to cling to?

     tonight i just finished the hiding place by corrie ten boom. amazing book. i read a shortened version of it when i was younger, or at least i knew the story, but reading it now was so much different. i'm still trying so desperately to cling to the hope that is in that book, to look at the suffering that they had to endure and to see all of the many ways that God worked in their lives to make everything work out for incredible good. yet here i am, infinitely better off than them, still wallowing in my selfishness and wondering how things could ever get better. makes a person feel very small. i caught myself at several points along the way, thinking to myself and trying to reason how my circumstances were so much different and how my suffering is so much different and how much more God loved her because she was actually doing something of worth and that i was too small to be noticed by God. how incredibly proud and stupid of me.

     even now i'm wrestling with what to feel. a part of me wants to be the victim, to be the one that is suffering, to have an excuse for all of the things that are going on, but another part is wondering how i could have ever felt sorry for myself when there is so much joy and so much hope and so much to do. then i tell myself that it would be so much better if i were not so alone. if i didn't have to feel that kind of pain, i could work so much more effectively.

     but, just like corrie realized, it's not my work, is it? it's not my strength. anything good that comes from any of my efforts will not be from me. i am a mess. i am pain and loneliness and conflict. i can't keep friends, i can't pass my classes, i can't take care of myself. but there is this awesome Place where i can go to hide. there is so much chaos outside the will of God. i pray that i may stay inside it, and i pray that He will use me.

     i wrote this tonight. it's an excerpt from what is now chapter nine, but since four of the preceding chapters have very little or nothing to them, i'm not quite sure where it will end up. it fits and it doesn't, but i wanted to let you read it--something good out of a tough night:

          Mary stopped short. On the other side of the dungeon, from behind one of the many pillars that supported the great castle above them, a light was shining. Slowly she crept toward it, nervous that any sudden movements might make it flee. When she reached the pillar, she stood on the darkened side of it and ran a hand along the rough stone, then, using it almost as a hiding place from the strange phenomenon, she leaned slowly around and looked behind. There she saw, high up in the wall, a small window crossed with iron bars, and behind it, a beautiful, full moon. The light from it streamed through the narrow window and caused a beam of broken light to fall on the floor just a few feet away from where Mary stood behind the pillar.
          Carefully, so as not to break the spell, Mary walked toward this ray in the palpable darkness and slowly reached her hand into the bright stream of light, finding that it was perhaps even more tangible than the darkness that otherwise surrounded her. She turned her hand over, feeling the beams as they wound around her fingers, and she wondered at the energy that seemed to spark up her arm. Finally, she stepped fully into the moonlight, letting it caress her and warm her heart, even if it could not warm her body.
          Mary looked at the moon and remembered what she had learned in school: that it reflected the light of the sun, and that even the great oceans of the earth were drawn to it, that the tides were turned by this otherwise cold and gray thing. From that moment, Mary found growing within her a new hope—a new purpose. There was only one thing that she was meant to do, and that was the greatest job of all—to reflect the light that was given to her.

     i'll have to put that song up once i have a decent internet connection again. i'm home, by the way, which has been good. more later. take care.