Friend:
I hear you on the grumpy thing.
But hey, that’s why the cat is making you cookies.
Me:
I’m probably grumpy cause I just spent a few hours hanging out with some friends, including a couple of very attractive girls who are not and are not going to be interested in me. But that’s such a lame excuse to be in a bad mood.
Friend:
Yeah, those sound like the motivations I typically accept for being grumpy.
Me:
I just hate this. I have no reason to be this irrationally pissed. I lead an excellent life. I have great friends who genuinely like and care about me. I have no real financial worries. I have a hope for eternity and a God who inexplicably continues to love my childish whiny self.
But because a few girls have decided that they didn’t want to go on a date with me I allow it to rule my emotional status. That’s so moronic that they would have to create a special special olympics for it to compete in.
And it would lose.
Friend:
… at least your wit is still intact.
Me:
Even if they are at their end.
Friend:
Me:
Thanks.
=D
I dunno man. I’m just very frustrated with being this way. I’m a grown damn man. Why are the opinions of some girls given so much sway in my mental health/stability when I have so much and God, who’s opinion of me is the only one who matters, cared enough about me to let his own son lead a freaking terrible life and be tortured and die just so I could be with them?
Friend:
That is a good question.
Me:
Because I’m a stupid childish idiot with completely irrational priorities.
=D
Friend:
Well, I’m in the same boat.
In some of the same ways, even!
That is long. (Other Friend) found it, and sent it to me. I don’t even like how true some of that stuff is.
I’m reading it and I’m all like, “Uhm… yes. So this totally makes sense, and while I can objectively recognize that it is Good… I still kind of hate it like a little wuss.
:D ”
Me:
Haha. I’m pretty sure that if God wanted me celibate who would’ve made me asexual.
I’ll read through it though.
Friend:
LOL
Yeah, that’s not even so much the point… it’s… it’s a deep well.
The whole concept of gender and the “energy of gender,” and its purposes and possible uses, is kind of nuts.
I mean, I do know what you mean—I see anything trying to tell me to be celibate, and I’m all SCREW.
THAT.
CRAP.
Me:
Yeah. No freaking way.
I honestly think God is trying to teach me things here. A lot of things. I mean, for example I switched the positions and realized that this must be what God feels like about people who don’t come to him and I was just blown away by that for an hour. Then I realized that every time I’ve loved a girl who loved someone else, that has to be how God feels about me wanting to be in a relationship more than I want Him.
Friend:
Dang. Yeah, that’s heavy.
Me:
And this has revealed to me how deep this idol goes. I mean, it’s a freaking cancer man. If a girl rejecting me for some other guy can wreck me (granted, off and on) for weeks then I need that the hell out of my life.
And I know it. I know God is more important. I’ve been in places where I knew that he was all I needed. Hell, I was there just this morning. And yet, a few hours with GOOD FREAKING FRIENDS, and I’m completely freaking pissed off at everything.
It’s not the part that makes sense that pisses me off. It’s my own irrational reactions to it that are driving me up the damn wall.
Friend:
I sacrificed myself, body, mind, heart, and soul, at the altar of Eros the whole time I was dating (Ex-girlfriend).
Idols, indeed!
Yeah.
Friend:
Yeah, you’re right. This is something fundamentally irrational.
Which is why rational means CANNOT be used to combat it, and they WILL NOT be successful.
You cannot psyche yourself out of it. I cannot advise you out of it.
Me:
This is a desire for something that some part of me really believes is what I need to be happy and content and fulfilled is some girl to tell me I’m awesome and that she loves me. I want Agape, but instead of taking it from God like i know I should I want it from a girl.
Friend:
The only times that I am free of it are when I allow myself the time and space to submit myself to something supra-rational.
Yeah, I see what you’re saying.
And I’ve had the same thing all along, just… muddled up with the Eros.
Me:
I mean, I realized just how much of my identity is built around one simple fact. I have not been “Rick Fox, the man Christ loved.” For my entire damn life, I’ve been “Ricky Fox, the boy girl after girl has rejected. who is a christian.”
I actually feel much better having ranted about it for a few minutes.
And I mean, my entire life, I have been attempting to manipulate God into giving me a girlfriend. I really wanted to serve him, but that was wrapped up in, “If I’m good enough, maybe this will be the year some girl will finally say yes.”
It’s as though I think that Christ’s death isn’t enough for me. And I don’t. But I’ve been living as though it wasn’t for so long that trying to get past it is driving me out of my skull.
Honestly there is part of me that is so happy that all these girls have told me no.
It is probably the best possible thing that could have happened to me.
Good Friend:
man, I wish I was sitting across from you right now, and that we were holding mugs of hot mulled cider or something.
Me:
That would be excellent.
If I’d had a great relationship from the beginning I probably wouldn’t be a christian.
Friend:
Me:
But it’s the truth. I found the preacher who made me a christian because his messages were about dating.
But for the last six years or so, I’ve been slowly plodding towards the realization that I can’t be Rick who Christ loved and Ricky who girls do not.
I have to pick one.
and I have.
Friend:
That reminds me of something Fr. told me last year, when (Ex-girlfriend) and I were dating, and I told him what a total failure I felt like. I had “failed” to be a good Christian example to her, “failed” to be a good boyfriend, etc.
Me:
But this idolatry, it’s like cancer. It’s got to be cut and poisoned and torn out of you. And it hurts like hell.
Friend:
He told me straight up that my assumption was not only erroneous, but arrogant. He said that (Ex-Girlfriend) didn’t need a perfect man; rather, she desperately needed an imperfect one who would drive her to the perfection of Christ.
… and even when he told me that, even as much as it rocked my boat at the time, I was still (Friend) who wanted (Ex-Girlfriend) to love him and be with him forever, and raise a family with him.
Not (Friend) who Christ loved.
Me:
Yep.
I finally hit that realization a few days ago. I think it was Monday.
I mean, just looking back at how much of my life has been dominated by my desire for some girl to affirm me was horrifying.
And the realization has shifted a lot of things for me. It’s just that for whatever reason, it didn’t immeadiately fix 19-20 years of bad thinking/sin.
Wow. I actually feel back to normal now that I’ve told somebody all that.
-brohug-
Me:
-brohug-
In the background a volcano errupts.
Friend:
I’m at the fuzzy, shadowy borders of an epochal shift in my life.
(lol @ volcano)
I guess you could say it really started in earnest when I said goodbye to (Ex-Girlfriend) a couple of weeks ago.
Friend:
Seems like you’re at the same place.
Me:
God I hope so.
I need to stop being that loser I’ve been for my whole life.
Friend:
We are UTTERLY WET.
AND WEEDY.
But no more!
Me:
But, hey, if God killed Jesus for me, then I can’t imagine he’s going to leave me here in my wet and weedy wasteland.
Friend
We shall lern to be TOPP!
With Christ our King, chiz chiz
Me:
That seriously comforts me. God didn’t put his son through all that to just save me and then let me putter on for 60 years or so feeling sorry for myself.
