Psalm 18:1

It's so much easier to be confused than to risk doing something difficult, or unfamiliar, or simply less interesting. There's a lot I don't do because it's just not interesting. The reason I have no life-ruling, soul-consuming material passion is because I just could never commit to any one thing. Eventually all things become uninteresting. Especially television shows about plane crashes and smoke monsters. [RIP LOST.] But see, being confused is generally interesting. Because internal mental puzzles gauge everything that exists externally against prior or future knowledge and soul-searching. And that is always interesting. Albeit generally less fruitful than, most things. In short, I spend a lot of time being confused, and I don't really like to, but it's mostly interesting, so I fall into this pattern of confusing a lot.

Conversely, I hate meta-analysis. Meta-analysis is not interesting, and usually just exasperating. It always stops me from understanding, from getting stuff done, consuming me with endless circular questions of little consequence. I have to forsake reasoning and justification, and just open my eyes to see the palace already.

I'm just trying to be normal. Normal? I don't mean, average, or, business as usual, or ordinary, or just like everyone else. By "normal" I mean, as I ought to be. I'm just trying to be as I ought to be. And often this process is confusing to me.

I sent some emails today! I've missed that! I didn't really realize I'd missed it, because usually when I think of sending emails, or writing personal notes of any kind, I think of how laborious and soul-sucking the process is . . . and that's still true. It took me a pretty long time to write what I did today. Writing such things steals all my time and feeling away. Yesterday we sent out support letters for our missions trips, and I was the last person to finish. By a lot. Because it took me fifteen minutes to write each brief little personalized note. I returned home emotionally exhausted.

I don't really know why this is, I'm guessing it has something to do with how I introvert feeling -- I'm irrationally obsessed with sincerity, and it feels sacrilege to write anything that I do not mean completely and fully, and so I agonize over the perfect words to convey my sentiments accurately . . . or at least, struggle to work up the feelings to accompany the words I ought to say. Writing those personal emails is like ripping out a little piece of my guts, like my words are communicating a very part of me and sharing those thoughts and feelings involves severing them from myself . . . that sounds melodramatic, but it is in a way accurate. Isn't communicating a way to show love? Doesn't showing love mean dying to self, and giving it away . . . ?

I think I may have been wallowing in disobedience, shutting my ears to the mandate: initiate, reach out, build, love. I took my parents' suggestion that I dampen communication with my "clique" to mean that I was justified in antisocial behavior. I am free from my fear of people! And yet I continue to cower in the corner of my cell, too lazy to love proactively. It's a process. God is good: to remind me, to enable me, to forgive me. Tomorrow is going to be difficult, remembering to initiate, to live externally as opposed to internally, to live normally, to live as-I-ought-to-be, but attempting to do what is difficult is leagues better than being confused.

"I love you, O LORD, my strength."