the new year

the new year this year is a little different than other years for me. most years i have massive goals, massive ambitions, but this year i do not have those massive wants or needs. I am not entirely sure if that is a good thing, but it is true nonetheless. I have a compulsive, obsessive, and driven personality. the issue is i use obsession with work, charities, and people to run. I have been making efforts to not work, to not become obsessed with people and things so i can try and get a grip on my head. I think i have finally come to grips with my life, with myself, with who i am, and hardest of all, who i have been.

There have been three main stages i have been in this year. The eat, drink, and be merry is one. Another is work your ass off and realize nothing came of it. the last was the learning to work, be loved, then rest. The bible has a very strange tension of working, being radical, and yet resting and existing in a state of being loved and loving. the problem with drinking your life into forgetfulness is that happiness is merely a forgetting, a false reality. Eventually reality has a nice knack for finding you and reminding you that you are living in a lie. The issue with working your ass off trying to be good, trying to earn respect, ect, is that you and i can't build relationships with just working, we can't earn love through work. the hardest thing has been learning to calm down and live in rest, love, peace. I have grown up in chaos, i have grown up in pain. When life is calm, when life is peaceful and enjoyable i panic. I force chaos into my life. Relationships cannot be built in chaos.

the whole thing of building a relationship, living in that relationship, then building a relationship with others to show the relationship you share is a slow process of existing, living, and enjoying what you do. This is so contrary to what i lived for, with what i did. I threw myself into everything until i broke and moved onto something else. i have no consistency for more than a few months. if there was consistency i eventually broke it, found a good reason to, and did. is it any wonder i never really had relationships with people? God took a lot of effort in ruining every plan i used to run away from relationship and people and made me chill. He put a lot of friends in my life that pursued me when i was running away and the result was i was horrified of being close to people, and now, i am experiencing love for the first time in the sacrificial way, i am experiencing family in a away i never did before. i tell you what, it is a beautiful thing.

For the new year, there are no obsessive goals, there are no massive plans, there is nothing horribly ambitious. i want enough to give it away, i want to be filled enough i can share the healing i have been given with others, i want to be inviting to people and show them love in spite of who they are, in spite of who i am. my goal is to live as a child who is loved by his father and to love as a person who is in the midst of the most beautiful love of all. All the sad things are becoming untrue and there isnt any reason to fear what has happened to me, there isn't any really for me to allow what has been done to me to control me. simply, what i have done, what they have done, it is all forgiven and the shame has been taken care of by another.

ecc 9:1-2
1But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him. 2 It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath.

solomon experienced everything, had everything, knew more than anyone. all he saw was everything ended the same. it does. we all die, we pass all we made onto people who know less than we do, all we worked for to people who haven't worked. This life is meaningless as an end, your happiness is meaningless as an end. The only thing that gives meaning to all of it is this isn't the end, merely the transition, home for just a time. If everything is a pursuit of jesus there really is a joy in everything instead of a meaninglessness in everything. if your drinking, your work, you family, is your end and your pursuit. you're just screwed, since me and you will fail.

in the end, i hope for this year to display the shade that i rest in. To be inviting to other people who are longing for me find the shade to rest in. Since i have found it. I am now resting.