existential crisis: 2011

i'm exhausted and angsty.
it's only Monday night and i feel like i've been run over by a freight train.

i had an emotionally cathartic conversation with one of the few people in Korea that i dearly Dearly Love, and HELL. this was about as close as i've gotten to finally breaking through.
i don't know what got into me, but all of the pain and anguish i've been feeling about the recent months came spilling out. she could see how roiled i felt and as i shared, i was able to share more.

i have a lot of metaphysical questions that i haven't examined closely in a while, but as i am due for my quarterly existential crisis, the pressure blew up into near tears.

i wonder about God sometimes. His existence and Love and Reality are all irrefutable to me. but it is too macroscopic and unbelievable and completely insane to fathom at times. i feel this way when God becomes secondary in my daily wanderings and then, He becomes impersonal. undoubtedly, this is my fault. i choose the temporary over the eternal with the majority of my choices in life--and it is only His  profound, severe, unrelenting Grace that keeps me hanging on. or rather, i'm dangling, on the unbreakable thread.

despite the fact that God met me so powerfully nearly 12 years to date, i've been a shadow of what i should be. despite violence and blood and broken bones and terror, i kept pieces of myself back. i wanted to keep those pieces for myself. my refusal to just give it ALL has resulted in the tragedy of a dozen wasted years.
for most of the year, i'm a miserable slave to the pieces i refused to surrender. however, for several weeks, maybe a month--of every given year, i get so sick of being sick of myself and just walk with God. and it's amazing. and i feel alive. and the universe makes complete fucking sense to me.
my time in Indonesia was the most recent of these episodes, and i KNEW who i was. and had absolutely no fears or insecurities or questions about... anything.
but then, whenever i'm presented with the same life, the same temptations, the same habits, i stumble again. and again. and eventually, i find myself in that familiar  filthy puddle of my own shit. wishing i could just eschew mortality. wishing i could just curl up against His ankles next to His throne. and just cry. and sleep.

here's the scarier thing. as the years have passed, not only have those lusts become deeper, but worse and worse lusts have accompanied the original. i'm crossing lines that i would've thought completely unimaginable, three years ago. five years ago. ten years ago.
i've cried myself awake with the ridiculously cliched question: who am i?

as i poured out this anguish to my friend, i read her wide eyes to communicate concern. but actually she said, "i'm experiencing exactly the same thing." there was encouragement in these words. she asked, "but do you think we would have to share everything?"

here's the thing about secrets. they're dirty. if we keep things hidden, they will grow and fester because there is no one to stop it. to call you on it. humans are greedy as hell. this manifests differently for every person, but in the end, we are slaves to our indulgences.
we have voracious, insatiable appetites for *whatever*--whether it is for seemingly innocuous things like relationships or our standards or adulation from others; or the more apparently destructive things like drugs or alcohol or random sex.

where does this leave me?

tonight, i was about one breath away from sharing my dirty little secrets with my dear friend. this is the closest i've come to doing that with anyone in Korea. this is monumental for me.
we both got teary and she gave me the hug that i'd been needing for the past few months. we have decided to retreat away, specifically to pray, for hours this weekend. hell. i MUST be desperate. but i feel hungry and dessicated and at the end of myself. in reality, i know that i don't need to eschew my mortality in order to curl up at His ankles at His throne.
i need to weep. and find some rest.