Useless On My Terms

Recently I've been a bit overwhelmed and a bit frustrated and a bit relieved.

Overwhelmed because I feel like I've finally peaked in the amount of busyness (to be distinguished from business) my life can take. Tonight was literally the first time I've been able to check email and Facebook since Monday afternoon. That's 3 days ago, in case you are reading this late.

And that's not because of media fasts or smart decisions. The internet dies at 11, which contributes to my deprivation, but mostly this interim was a result of constant activity from work at 8 AM until meetings and commitments end and I go to sleep -- still usually too late to get a full night's sleep.

This week is an exception because I'm on dinner clean-up duty and I had to switch work shifts with a coworker, eating away at the brief snippets of time the evening usually affords. But clean-up duty aside, I feel buried in scheduled activity.

And what it makes it worse is that I'm nearly incapable of assessing my status in life without comparison, and all around me are people without 40 hour/week jobs who have multiple days off every week (technically I do too, with Sunday and another day but Sunday is so scheduled it might as well be written off). And I can't help but feel jealous and slighted when they talk about long times spent in the Word or hanging out on the beach or reading solid Christian books or visiting New York and Philly or just hanging out and bonding with project peeps.

Part of me feels like I'm missing out on what project's supposed to be about. But when I take a step back and think about things (like now), I'm missing out on a lot of fun stuff but besides the Bible and Christian literature, I'm nabbing most of project's spiritual elements so I don't have that much to complain about.

I just feel better when I complain. It's like scratching an itch.

Speaking of which, one of the chief remaining causes of my frustration is a continued bout with poison ivy and ringworm. Both of these are little teases. The poison ivy seemed to be clearing up and the itching was mostly done about four days ago, but then a new wave of bumps popped up all across my feet and the itching began anew. There're actually some neat lines of bumps packed so close that they look like stretches of raised skin, where you can tell that plant leaves ran across the skin. By neat, I mean incredibly itchy and resilient.

And once I got antifungal cream on it regularly, the ringworm seemed to be dying as well. The swelling and reddening faded and the bumps disappeared. Then a ring of bumps popped up around the perimeter of the original site. The internet said four weeks, but I was definitely hoping it'd die faster.

Anyway, as frustrating as that's been, that's just the icing on the cake. The gooey, fattening interior is about my relationship with God, which has been as unsatisfying here as it might have been at home, just without isolation to allow apathy.

I can't help but try to prove myself to God and people through how well I can stay spiritually disciplined, and I have so many twisted motives behind everything I do that I only get to see piece by piece as the Holy Spirit digs into my psyche.

I feel spent and empty and I want an intimacy and reality to my faith that I don't know if I've ever experienced or if it's even realistic to expect. And then I'm quick to turn around and say, "Well everyone else clearly has this thing and somehow they get what the Christian life is all about and experience God in this way that I can't."

And lately the thing I've been realizing (slowly and in a not-fully-internalized way) is that it doesn't matter how I perceive God or if I'm frustrated by my relationship with him or if I'm doing all the right Christian things. Because at the end of the day, I'm saved and Christ paid the debt for the sins I'm doing right now and I'm not responsible for working out all the pieces of my sanctification.

And that's so satisfying and relieving. As important as any of that other stuff is, it's all totally secondary to salvation. Sanctification is great. Whatever. I'm saved.

I forget the Gospel so easily.