IN THE NAME OF

This week has been a long week.  I started training at work, and let me tell you... I hate commuting.  If there is one thing on this planet that can make me crazy upset, it is undoubtedly traffic.  My car is the other.  No air conditioning in a car with windows that don't roll down while stop and go traffic makes my car an oven is the nightmare I face every day.  Yeah, traffic really irks me.  Traffic, and also having no personal time to myself in a day.  I didn't really realize it until recently, but not taking time to be by myself and think makes me really irritable to little things, although it's nothing that I don't get over after a moment.

I had great alone time today, and it was really great.  While I was swimming in the pool (while the girl who talks to herself sat in the hot tub, talking to herself) I began thinking about life and what kinds of things I live my life for: what do I live my life in the name of?  I mean, it is easy to say the things we want to live our lives for, and even easier to acknowledge the things we think we ought to live for... but when we cut trim the wishywashy away, what is left?  The fear that I keep running from is that if I cut the wishywashy out of my life, that there would be little left to count.  Am I a fool who thinks that I am more than I am?

I floated there in my pool while talks-to-herself-girl blabbled (I made that word up, it is "blab + babbled") incoherences on and on, and it got me thinking even more.  Maybe I am no different than this girl.  Maybe I am confused and lost.

For so long I believed in my heart that the only thing worth living life for was to be in love.  I defined my life by whether of not there was a girl in my life that I was in love with, but then I got to this point where I realized how unfulfilling -- and inconsistent -- this was.  I rationalized at times that I was living an incomplete life because I wasn't married or didn't have a girlfriend.  I feel so duped.

The only love that I can define my life by is Christ's, and only through that love will I ever know or share love with anyone else.  I have been living my life for the wrong things.  While I lived my life in the name of love, love became an idol that steered my thoughts away from God, and the only thing that lured my eyes back to God was his perfect and untarnishable love.

I thought living alone was with a girl to love was a fate worse than death, but I realized I am hardly alone.  God put into place around me a tremendous group of friends who care about me, and their love is the kind of love I think God really wants me to live my life for.  I've said it a few times, but today I really mean it, I don't need a girlfriend to be happy... and I don't need one to make me broke--I seem to do quite well getting broke for myself... but thank the Lord I am out of school and actually have time to work now!

I really like what I said just a moment ago:  "While I lived my life in the name of love, love became an idol that steered my thoughts away from God."  Even though I believe the scripture "God is love," I got so wrapped up in the passion of loving a woman I do not know yet that I neglected the one who makes love possible and worthy of living for. 

Words of Relient K wisdom:

that's not the way, I want to live.

i need to change

yeah something's got to give

if home is where you heart is

then my home is with you

What am I living my life for?  I am living my life in the name of freedom, and it has rarely felt so good.