I have been trying to write this post for nearly 3 months now. Its been difficult.
There are times of alignment in my life. Everything seems to merge into a singular thought or message that is appropriate in my particular season, however long each one may persist. If I was more vigilant concerning my journal, I imagine this phenomenon would be easily identified. It would likely be the best way to divide my life into its important chapters. Sadly, I am not constant in writing these things down and I've probably been hurting myself in doing so. I wish my younger self had believed how essential good record-keeping is to self-discovery.
Sometimes I feel more "present-John" than I would like. I begin to feel like I'm just motor-coordination. Like I had one too many drinks. Like my interactions are reflexes, lacking emotional dynamics, concern, and heart. There is no past or future, just the present behavior to go about or conversation to have. People don't really care for this kind of person, I don't think. I'm sure that I don't. It feels like a very deep sort of dishonesty, like I'm a drifter inside my own life that I can't rely on to be constant.
Its at these times that I feel a profound disconnect from each chapter in my life. My fearful childhood that transformed into thinly veiled insecurity is discrete from all that has happened since. My high school years of loneliness and inability to communicate, marked with distinct and still painful failures seem totally different from my college years of social integration and exploration. My simultaneously occurring romance with my then future wife feels separate from that. My marriage feels separate from my dating years. I do not feel continuous.
If I were to overlay my status with God on top of this, I would be hard-pressed to say there was a correlation. I've been closer and farther away in both joy and suffering. Never approaching abject disbelief, and having been alternately on a moment-to-moment level, I don't know what to make of it. Right now I'm neither.
I've had, for as long as I can remember, the notion that when I die, God's going to disrobe me. Everyone, actually. The moment of judgment need be embarrassing if its going to be fair. I know, at least superficially, about the dark areas of my soul (though its an ongoing, painful process of coming to terms, isn't it?). I can claim them, say that I desired them as they were in the moments of my weakness, numerous as they have been and as they yet are.
When you feel this disconnect that I'm trying very hard to describe, self-definition becomes difficult. Who am I really? Am I judged for the current head on my shoulders or the one that was? What about when I was a lonely 15 year old? What about when I was a headstrong 19 year old? I wouldn't know how to judge myself. I'm not saying that God isn't able to merely because I can't. It's more like I'm scared that I won't understand whatever conclusion he comes to, be it boundlessly merciful or purely just. Maybe my eyes will be opened for the first time just then. I don't know, but I desperately want to understand.
I'm not trying to explain an anger over my judgment, whichever way it falls. I think of it of a lack of emotion, not a presence. I'm fearing senselessness. I'm fearing it in my death, but more urgently, I'm fearing it in my own life. This isn't a balance of the measures of pain or joy that I experience, both of which are no stranger to any of us.
I remember when I was 14 or 15 I was frustrated with my family's dog. I don't remember the particulars about what she did, but I was upset. I punished her by putting her in her cage for a time. I was so incensed that I came back and to my shame, I struck her across the side of her head in my anger. Recalling it now, she might as well have been human by her reaction to my pathetic behavior. She looked startled and disbelieving.
I'm not attempting to make my behavior's like God's. I don't think there was anything remotely righteous going on there. I can empathize with her emotion and I know what it feels like to wonder what's going on. I don't know if its sin to ask that. I don't know if its sin to not be able to feel and to understand the course of your life, to be out of touch. There are times when I feel horribly kicked around and, without anger,I am a stalemate as to what I emotion I should have, or even worse (and more often), I fly wildly between guilt and anger, only to average out or settle into numbness and acceptance.
I've been told the theological explanations as to why I might feel this way. Its not satisfying. I get the idea of sin and its direct consequence as well as indirect consequence from another person's sin. I get it and I'm okay with it. I'm not pursuing empathy really, because I don't believe that I'm special in this instance, like I'm the only one who ever felt this way. I've never wanted someone to cry for me. Its just that sort thing one has to look at, that's all. This isn't everything to me and I'm not taking it out of the larger context of my life. Its just a small, uncomfortable, nothing.
