Let's stop talking, and die already.

I've had a mentally draining week trying to learn a new career. I've just now returned from a Greek Orthodox lenten service, trying to put all of my strivings back into perspective.  


Here's the ramble that has surfaced:

I've been saved from many dangerous things. God has shown me a lot of mercy, and He has forgiven all of my rebellious mistakes. God has been good to me. His goodness leads me to believe that I'm not meant to keep living out the foolish things I choose for myself. I have this suspicion that God wants to do something with my life that runs in opposition to the normal structures of my society. I have had this suspicion for a very long time, but I haven't known how to deal with it. I've tried to conform my differences into the norms of people in this world and so numb the discomfort I feel during everyday living.

This longing never fully goes away, but sometimes I quiet it, momentarily, with companionship, or alcohol, or overindulgence, or entertainment, or by sinking into depression and lethargy. In the healthiest forms, this longing becomes a new song to sing. At least I think that's a healthy form for it to take. 

I don't want to quiet the longing anymore. 

I want to find this longing's source. 

I want to find a reality that balances all of my life. 

I've been feeling a tightness in my stomach and have had a shortness of breath lately. I've been feeling a constant anxiety and I don't know its source. But I know that I don't want to live this way anymore. 

If this anxiety is any indication of something that I am not doing in my life, then I want to get to the bottom of this nagging worry and scan out the terrain down there. I want to see if this bottom is founded on any truth, or anything real. If it's not real then I want to see it for the illusion that it is and be freed from it. I guess what I really want is freedom; from self, from expectations--both my own and others'--from worldly passions, and from this desire to be elevated by human beings. I want to be elevated by God instead. 

I have a desire to do something truly great with my life and my time, but I'm not entirely sure that my motives are always pure because so much of the time I only think about myself and my own glory. I don't think I'll be capable of anything great unless I stop seeking my own glory. At least that's what I've noticed as being the common theme in every great life lived before mine; the great ones didn't seek their own glory, and if they did they were eventually overthrown by another "great" one, or by death. 

Death is the leveler of the playing field; it is self's truest rock bottom and a solid foundation to build upon. 

And I know that God says that we need to die before we can live fully, so I must die to my self. I need to not want anything of my self anymore, but only desire and do as the Father would have me do. I don't want to talk anymore about this though. I just want it to happen. 

I want my flesh to die so that I can be free to live. 

There's no use in talking about it anymore, or philosophizing, or talking theology. It just needs to be. I need to be free.  

...ramble on...