(Sorry I'm writing so much, you don't have to read it, I'm just trying to get all the English thoughts out of my head so that I won't accidently speak English when I'm in Quebec for five weeks this summer, because if I do I'll get sent home.)
Ah yes, just choose joy she said, it make sense, and it will be lovely she said.
But there are mountains right?
Mountains we have to climb.
Joy is not a tropical island reached by a speeding fast jet plane.
A plane that speeds away from the mountains.
Joy is on the mountain. Joy is a way of climbing the mountain.
But I think this way takes time to figure out.
Like any skill we are trying to learn or habit we are trying to make: we don't wake up one morning doing it perfect, we fall and we stumble and we get a little better slowly, slowly, slowly.
That's why I say I'm sharing my journey with you as I stumble along.
I don't know what I'm doing and I'm not very good at whatever it is, but I'm doing it and I'm falling, I'm laying down, then I'm getting up again, I'm growing, and I'm learning.
Sometimes I believe lies without knowing it, but then hopefully my eyes are opened later.
I'm slow.
Slow, slow, slow. But I'm climbing.
That's the way I am for everything else so why not for this joy journey?
I'm learning to be patient with myself and forgive myself when I fall down. It helps me be brave enough to get back up.
So what I want to share with you are some of the things getting in the way of my joyfulness: the mountains I'm trying to learn to climb, the mindsets I'm trying to get rid of.
The first one is hopelessness. I talk about that more here: http://aragtaghooligan.blogspot.ca/2012/11/i-shall-hope.html
Basically it's just the idea that there is a lot wrong with the world, but I'm trying to believe that God is in control: that the bad can be made good (maybe not the good we'd like but beauty can come from brokenness), hearts can be changed, and at the end it will all be worth the beautiful forever together with Him. If we give up because it's too hard, well that's just a waste of time and energy when we could be dancing up the mountain.
The second mountain is guilt.
It's odd because I believe that Jesus' death means there is now no condemnation for those who believe. Everything we've done wrong is forgiven. We are free to grow without hating ourselves for the mistakes we make along the way, and yet oh man do I ever hate myself sometimes.
Guilt is a huge mountain in my life.
I feel guilty about everything.
I feel guilty about what I do and about what I don't do. I feel guilty when I decide to take a break or not to bother with that extra effort when I know my paper's good enough because I think about how I could have gotten a few more marks although it would have come at a cost and I probably needed a nap more than five more marks. I feel guilty when I spend money even if its on something that everyone else says is worth it because I could have given that money away or because if I ever become homeless it will be all my fault. I worry about things going wrong, not so much because I'm not willing to go through a tough time, but because I can't face the shame and guilt of knowing that I brought it on myself through bad decisions. Then I feel guilty about worrying when I should be trusting. I feel guilty when I'm crying myself to sleep because I know that others have it worse than me. I feel guilty for being sad because I know I should be at peace, be content, be thankful, and have joy. I feel guilty for feeling guilty because I know I should forgive myself.
The weird thing is that neither of these mountains need to be mountains. I don't need to feel guilty because I am forgiven. I don't need to be hopeless because there is hope. But see, the mountains are in my mind and that is almost worse than if they were just real on the outside. If they were real on the outside I could use the truth in my mind like secret weapons like big blasting water guns to corrode the mountains and break apart the rock till its just a lovely hilly country but not a big bad mountain. However, when the mountains are in my mind they fight the truth, they grow over the truth. I have the weapons I need but they are just ideas in my mind that are hard to believe when the mountains are growing over them.
I want to be a joyful person and I want to have faith, but the funny thing is no one has told me how to do it. They've told me what they think is true; they've told me what to believe, but after I understood all that they didn't tell me how to use it against the mountains. They don't hold my hand on the journey. I get left alone sometimes staring at the mountains with these weapons I don't know how to use/ how to believe, trying desperately to figure out the first step.
Here's my first step: forgiving myself for not being joyful, for not dancing up the mountain, even as I try to dance up the mountain.
I said yesterday that I hate duty. I didn't explain that I hate duty because if you don't do a duty you have to feel guilty.
I said that I don't want to not do the things I should just because I'm freed from seeing them as duties. That's true. I want to dance joyfully up the mountains even though I'm trying not to see it as a duty so that I won't have to hate myself when I fall, but it's really, really hard to do.
My first step is forgiving myself for failing. I already haven't managed to be joyful.
That's ok, I'll never be joyful if I'm mad at myself for not being joyful.
Man life is confusing.
Forgive me for blabbering.
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