Getting Lost in Myself

Whenever I want to do something more, I seem to end up doing it less. I want to wake up a half hour earlier, and instead sleep an hour longer. I want to workout more, and I haven't been to the gym in months. I want to write more, and I have no words to write. What is it about human nature that when we consciously want to do something, the lazy side of us kicks in and blocks us with tv, tiredness, stupid tablet games, anything but what the deep inner self wants.

I know I have been negligent in managing my blog, I mean, I haven't even so much as given it more than a passing thought. Maybe I should write about Budapest, about my summer, or maybe I'd have something to say about the fact that I adopted a dog (and my whole life revolving around him). But no, few words or inspirations have crossed my path. I have been reading a bunch, and they have largely been in the self-improvement arena (Total Money Makeover, 4-Hour Workweek).

So when what I'm calling my new church started a series on "Is this SERIOUSLY my life", it struck a cord deep inside. I started thinking about my personal life and feelings of dissatisfaction, confusion on where to go next, unhappiness in my current work, and just general feelings of unrest. Every fiber in my being screams at me to run away, to go live in a little cottage in a small village and be that odd American girl with her dog who lives at the end of the lane (complete with a meet cute with Jude Law). I think of movies like Under the Tuscan Sun, The Holiday, and Elizabethtown (though the last is less about international, but still in the vein of running away). What is it that appeals to me so strongly? It's that abandoning who we think we are, stripping away of all the preconceived notions and ideas of self, and forging a new path, one that is truer to our being.

That is where this morning's sermon (if you want to call it that) fit in. Instead of a monologue, it was a dialog between two men. They talked about finding that brokenness and working through it to come to the true self. Going through the death to experience the rebirth, and acknowledging that the body is a whole, and when the subconscious is in pain and conflicted it manifests itself in physical ways (pains in the stomach, aches in the back and neck). While the "good Christian child" inside me screams how new age this sounds, in my heart of hearts, it rings painfully true. How often do I just want to get around the pain and find what I am supposed to be or where I am supposed to go. The answer to these questions really is inside of us, and asking God to tell us what to do, is kind of the easy way out, it's saying I don't want to deal with the crap, I want the easy answer. When if we dug through and dealt with all the hurt inside, we would easily find that the answer is inside of us. It would be a gut reaction deep in our souls.

Anyway, that's a lot of deep for a sunny October Sunday. But if you're interested in the dialog, you can find it here 10/4/15 Is this seriously my life? - and I would say don't skip the songs if you have the time, they all connect into the theme of what the message is trying to teach. Not to mention the last one, which is a Damien Rice song. Seriously, a church that can see worship in the secular is my kind of church.