Last Exit Before Oblivion

I drift... floating through a world I've always and inevitably seen as hostile. I've tried to avoid it. The encounters are almost always unpleasant. I disengage from it.

How much of this is a hostile reaction to God's mercy? "OK, God, if yer gonna be nice to me, I'm going to turn myself into an idle lump of protoplasm. Just try to change that."

What, really, is there for an independent man to live for when he's no longer independent? This ought to lead to despair. My purpose for living is gone. I can't do it. Maybe I never could, maybe I'm tired after banging away at the same ideas for most of my life. Why am I still here?

I came to God expecting answers. It could be he has already given me the answer: I'm here because he wants me to be here. In a way my relationship with him is the answer to all the questions I've asked. I knew even as a child there was something more. I never trusted my parents, but I had this kind of crazy trust, or faith, that things would work out.

They did. I'm still here. I'm no self-determined fireball, but I'm here, and God wants me to be here. Still, I'm lost. Am I really supposed to just sit at God's feet and look at him, and converse? Is this a transition phase, as I learn what life is really about? I ought to be desperate, but what I feel instead is this odd floating. Disaster is just beneath the thin skin of God's support: if he lets go, there will be no end to the drop.

It seems so passive. Where is the room for my self-expression? Well, that's probably my own fault, in my pique at no longer being in charge. But then, I am in charge: no one else makes the decisions as to what to do in any minute or day.

What do I care about? I think that's a reasonable place to start in finding a purpose for living, but I'm not allowed to care. If I do start caring, I attack myself mercilessly. That at least explains the deadening: I approach God, get close, feel the warmth radiating from his chest, and then run and attack myself for allowing it. It's crazy. It'd be even crazier if God didn't step in and damp the reaction.

How does one live when one is not allowed to care about anything? Just what am I supposed to do with myself? Tangles within tangles. God is working at teaching me to care, or make me able to care.

Well, I know I care. Otherwise I'd have given up long before now. But how can I care, when the things I thought I cared about have been taken away? Independence, self-reliance, walking alone.

I need God. So far the purpose for this is still hidden. Maybe I'm afraid to look, or maybe it's an artifact of making myself small enough to fit my self-concept. The independence is gone. It seems like a big deal to me, but this state is the logical extension of what began years ago: I'm not such a good guide for myself, so need help.

I just never realized caring is such a big problem. It's too easy to abandon things. Survival by shedding what is too heavy to carry, like some '49er crossing the 40-Mile Desert. I'm afraid to care because at any time I could get attacked from without... and I'm guaranteed to get attacked from within.

So, I drift. It's actually not so bad. Some things don't get done, but the critical ones do.