Tension

As I finished up the semester a little over a week ago, I had already been suffering from tension. Not like the tension that causes headaches, but the tension like on a rope that you are pulling on with someone tied to the other end of it. With school, I always have something to do with homework, papers, or reports. This takes a priority in my daily life. When that ends, I find many other things begin pulling at me. What now is my priority? This confusion isn't for a lack of things to do, but a lack of priorities on my part. What is that one thing that is needful? What absolutely has to be done? This is my quandary.

I read the Bible. I pray. I go to work. I take care of what needs to be done at home, yet none of these give me a sense of fulfillment or purpose. What is that underlying element that I turn to and work on when all else is done? Right now, I don't know what that is. I love my job as difficult and annoying as it may be when dealing with middle-schoolers and grade-schoolers. But I get to interact with them and can share my faith with them and I thoroughly enjoy that and thank God for that opportunity. But when I leave work, work stays there.

So now there are many things pulling at me for priorities: different desires to read more, study greek, hobbies, financial needs, or focusing on what my life needs to get back to "living." I could go on and on. Different things creep in, both good and bad, and want to take control. Bad memories creep in and affect my moods. I get to thinking about past relationships and wondering about why they turned out how they did. At any moment I may have loneliness, joy, fullness, gladness, depression, frustration, aggression, emptiness, or worthlessness coursing through the veins of my emotions and it may change at any given moment for no apparent reason.

Recently I have been going through the memory of my life altering events from recent years. Tomorrow is May 25th and it will have been three years since my mother died and my wife left me. And honestly I have to say that sometimes it still hurts like hell. It seems as though now I am finally beginning to actually deal with the loss of my mother. The betrayal of my wife in leaving me how and when she did honestly left me in a state that I do not have the words to truly convey the depth of feeling I had. I felt like a zombie: lifeless. I blindly walked into another relationship a few months later seeking something to help ease the pain and I felt like I had decided to move on. That was the biggest mistake of my life and still has unresolved issues that pull at me as well.

Do I get a headache from all these things pulling at me at once? No, for me it is more of a heartache. When all the emotions have filtered through and I get down to brass tacks, I am always pulled back to God by His love, kindness, and mercy for me. He alone is worthy of my time and effort, and in whatever I do, whether work or play, I believe that it is all a part of His plan to make me who I am.