Still Puzzled...

It kills me how emotionally spent and just spiritually dead inside I have felt in the last month or two. I feel like my season of struggle and just straightup drought inside is nothing short of ongoing. This has led me to a place I think I must finally come to grips with: depression. I think I've been depressed now for about a year at least, and it's time to get help. I would like to believe that God could be the sole cure for my depression -- at whatever degree and in what sort of condition it might lie -- but I'm realizing how caring for oneself comes into play here, and I have to take care of myself. This is no copout for whatever state of mind or mood I've been in, for I believe it's been a funk that's lasted for quite some time. Much more deeply rooted than a simple "funk," really.

I haven't taken care of myself in the last year. I don't sleep, staying up until wee hours of the morn doing next to nothing sometimes. I have no clue how many times at school last year I saw the sun rise or at least heard the birds chirping when I went down for the "night" [more like the break of dawn]. I didn't play much tennis all year -- a sport I've used as a vehicle to release untold amounts of frustration and stress in the last few years. I played tennis but once all spring, not counting the two times over spring break in NC. I also eat ever-so-irregularly, which is probably one reason I've been lurking around 160lbs for the last 5 years [newflash: not ideal for someone standing 6'2"]. I can stress myself out over just about anything -- all the way down to making simple phone calls to people. I dislike the phone greatly. All the while I've not been trusting God to have my back on all things, large and small. I have completely read but one book of any kind outside of class in the last year -- and it was a whopping 87 pages [despite being a ton of truth]. I don't know why I withhold from myself the things that I love to do. It's just wack. I don't think I allowed myself to laugh this last year of school as I can and as I should be, considering how blessed I truly am to even be alive.

I'm in a really disconcerted state of mind, and I need to find peace of mind. I try to keep reminding myself that there's a season for everything -- "a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance... a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend..." [Ecclesiastes 3:3-4, 6-7]. I hope I haven't gone so astray from the Hope I profess that I have come to that "time to give up." I don't want to give up; I want to fight. I hope it's in me. Truth is, I really need to find it elsewhere and look up, because what's in me is just dead and fails me, and I hate it.

I feel like my life in Jesus Christ has just come to a point where I have to put up or shut up. Why I would go back to the burdens that I knew before, I do not know, but I think I find myself sliding ever so subtlely more with each week. I've lost a lot of the desires I had -- to be in the Word regularly [let alone daily] especially and, more recently, to pray. This has been the most painful thing to me, because as I've struggled a lot in the last two years, I have always found solace -- an oasis for my aching mind and soul -- in praying to God. To have that diminished has been hard to grasp. I cling to another verse in Ecclesiastes: "For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief" [Ecc 1:18]. If that isn't one of the biggest truths I've uncovered in the last year, I don't know what is. I'm not saying I've become some wise person, but I've become a lot more aware of things around me and about me in the last two years, even the last six months. I guess this is growing up.

I'm going to keep pursuing the Hope and the Love that I still believe has taken hold of me. I'm just so tired of the BS in my life and tired of prolonging the madness myself. I want to chase God like He chased me, because while I've never known as much struggle and ache inside as I have since I've really known God for a year and a half, I've never known as much happiness and joy at any other time either. That keeps me hanging on and wanting more. Life is a haul, but I want to see the beauty of that haul. Not just that, but I want to experience the "pure joy" of trials. I'm in this for the haul.