Peace for Despair

She sits at the window;
she hurts from the day.
she screams out to no one,
she cries to the same.
she falls from the sunshine,
she breaks her shattered heart.
she gasps at the splinters and
she tries to gather them up.
she drops the sharp pieces
she spills them on the floor
she yells out at everyone
she hates her broken heart.
she despairs...oh, she despairs.

It's not the greatest in the world, but it's a start. I think it might eventually be a song, believe it or not. The song isn't about me, either. I don't know who it's about.

---

Lately I've been going to bed and feeling useless. Then I wake up and feel useless. Through every waking moment I feel a hole in my middle, right above my bellybutton and about the size of my fist. It's a clean hole right through me, and at night I become aware that there is cold air blowing through me. I have a missing piece.

Am I valuable? Am I worth the oxygen I breathe? Am I doing my part? For so long, my life has been about bettering myself. Sure, I like to please people. But more so, I have an incredible drive to please myself. If I'm not up to my personal expectations, I quit. They call it perfectionism, apparently. I call it torture. Who regularly guilt-trips themselves? I do. There is nothing good about it. (Well, the 4.0 is a plus...) So every night I go to sleep feelinginadequatee. I'm almost 20 and I often feel that I have little to show for it. Half the time I go to sleep wondering if I've failed myself.

Then there is God. For the past year I've been trying to do better with God and instead my relationship with him has slipped into atrophy. My prayers are hollow, my bible reading is stagnant, and worshipping has become incredibly difficult. I've started hating having a quiet time because I can't meet any expectations (my own) with my regularity. Church is in Thai, for the most part. I can count the number of sermons I've understood in the last six months on one hand. (Not that I'm complaining. A sermon is the worst possible way of communicating information into my head. I'm a discuss and process person--but I haven't had that either.)

Don't worry. I'm not barfing onto my blog. It gets better. ; )

So I cried. I cried and cried and cried. I didn't feel better. But my heart was opened. I used to be a very introspective person and I stopped because it hurt too much to think about myself. I'd forgotten how to do that, and instead I was only aware that something was wrong. And the crying opened my heart. My heart hurt, I realized. That is howcallousedd I was. My soul hurt and I didn't even know it.

What do you do when God isn't giving you peace and you can't figure out how to "give your burdens to Jesus?" I've struggled with that for years. So many Christians say it, and I never could figure out how. When I asked how, they would say things like, "just lay it down at his feet" or "ask him to take it away." Sorry, folks. No dice. It wasn't working. I didn't get it.

My dad is amazing. There is no denying that. I have received better advice from him than anyone else in the world. I think because he's been either a pastor, worship leader, or missionary in the past 25 years and he's been my daddy for close to 20.

I explained to my mom everything I just explained here, and she said some good things. I need to not beat myself up so much for one. Check. I'll try. But she had no answer for the "burden" thing and how far away from Jesus I feel. That's when my Daddy yelled from the computer,

"You just have to be grateful, Annie."

That's it. I can do that. I can be thankful for my Jesus. I can be thankful for everything I can do and for everyone I can be with. I can be thankful for happy things, for sad things, for big things, for little things.

I talked to Jesus last night as I went to sleep and told him five things that I am very grateful for.

I didn't feel empty.

I was made to praise Jesus. Then the heavyness slips away and the holes are filled with love.