If I can be candid: this year has been rather miserable for me. I won’t describe my predicaments in detail here, but I’ve been struggling with many health problems that, most days, leave me feeling very sick and barely able to function. Week after week, month after month. It’s a ceaseless refrain. Occasionally I have a “good” day, and it seems like everything is perfectly normal, but those kinds of days are oddly unpredictable and few and far between.
What’s more, my relationship with God has been reduced to something scarcely recognizable. I still believe, but I’m holding on by a thread. I used to be so close to God. Even in the darkness (and there were years of darkness), He was always, at the end of the day, my most intimate Friend, the One I loved.
But now, who knows where in the hell I am? I’ve probably drifted far downstream, to a place where goodness is but a glimmer and the fruit on the vine is all shriveled up. In this place, dozens of existential confusions vie for my attention (as they were always wont to do), but these days I’m too tired to contend with them. I spent so much time, and so much yearning, seeking truth and love – only to end up in this crooked, lifeless place. The bleakness of my disappointment is hard to render.
I think to myself: “Maybe I’m just tired of trying to be good.” Indeed, sometimes, in my disillusionment at what life has revealed itself to be, I feel like abandoning the whole project of being a decent human being. “Wouldn’t it be easier,” I think, “to take my messed-up humanity and run with it?”