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 was just about to
shut this journal down for good.
Last Friday, I sat down at my computer, intending to HTML-ize these
last few entries. And I – just – couldn’t – do it. I just didn’t
feel like spending time on it; there were other things that were a lot
more interesting to me at the time. And I realized, there’s pretty
much always something more interesting to me than doing this.
It was then that I decided to end it. But I didn’t juts want
the journal to starve to death out in cyberspace – I wanted to give it
a suitable ending. Luckily, I decided to put that off, too.
I’ve had an amazing run so far. I’ve been on the web for – what
– four years? And although I’ve never had any kind of regular readership,
I’m sure dozens of people have stumbled upon the site and said to themselves,
“what the heck is this guy all about?”
But after the whirlwind that was 2000 – a new baby, a new job, a new
house, and a cross-country move; geesh! – things have pretty much stagnated
here, and I figured that it might be best to just add an “And they lived
happily ever after…” tagline and just let the whole thing go.
Then I went to a concert last night.
I’ve had these kind of musical epiphanies before (perhaps if I get
sufficiently bored, I’ll go back and link to a couple of them, but I wouldn’t
hold your breath). This time it was a concert by Sonicflood, the
young Christian rock band whose forte is praise songs. But it wasn’t
so much the music as it was something that one of the group members said.
It was kind of a strange concert anyway; my wife and I aren’t exactly
old fogies, but we were probably around the 90th-percentile agewise at
this thing. And I’ve never seen a concert before where the lead singer
picks up a Bible and starts reading. But the music was good, and
the emotion in the room was – well, it was downright scary.
He talked about his battle with Krohn’s Disease when he was growing
up; I’ll leave out the details, but it left him with a lot of emotional
scars, as well as physical ones. He talked about building up defense
mechanisms until his heart was numb. Then he read this verse:
"The most important [commandment]," answered Jesus, "is this: `Hear,
O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with
all your strength.’” He explained his interpretation – that loving
God with your heart was mentioned first because it was most important.
“Mind” is third on the list (in some translations, it’s actually last).
That’s when I realized – my heart is dead.
I don’t know when it happened, but it seems like something that’s been
steadily going on for years. I’m kind of ashamed of it, really –
I mean, I’ve read stories of people who have dealt with abuse, and neglect,
and pain and physical problems and I can understand how they can feel –
well, feel nothing at all. But how could it happen to me? I’ve
got more than I could even want; plenty more than I actually deserve.
I’ve never been subject to any kind of serious abuse or mental torture
(although I can point to things from fifteen or twenty years ago that still
scar me today. I won’t even bring them up, though, because they’re
not the real issue.
The real issue is this: I’m like that because I’ve made myself that
way. I enjoy being a sufferer. I get a selfish gratification
from being able to complain, and frankly, I find that I’m pretty darn good
at it. It’s the lazy thing to do. Why should I give up my heart
when I can just make excuses about not doing instead? And basically
it comes down to this….
I’m so proud of myself.
Why else would I want to complain, like I did for six years, that I’m
too good for my job? That I deserve to live somewhere better than
where I was? Why else would I read the newspaper, and watch the news,
and complain about all the crazies and idiots out there shooting other
kids in schools, and about transsexuals who kill their husbands by castrating
them (true story)? Why else would I think it worth broadcasting all
of my exploits onto the internet?
What’s scary is that I have no idea how to get out of this rut.
It’s not that I don’t think I can change; I can change, but it’s going
to take a lot more work than I’m used to doing.
I did make one step in the right direction last night – actually, I
can’t even take credit for that, because it was my wife’s idea. We
decided to sponsor a World Vision child. She’s a cute little girl
from the mountains of Peru, and we’ll be helping to provide sanitation,
educational materials, and health care for her village. It’s actually
such a small token for us (and now I’m starting to sound like a commercial),
but it’s nice to think that I might actually be doing some good for somebody,
as small as it may be.
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