Got it backward somehow ...

My twisted little mind has such a facility for WORRY ...

When I am worried {and I am nearly always worried about something} I perform ... get up without the alarm clock, stay up without complaining, skip meals without noticing ... I become a veritable Hercules of anxiety. During those times there are only two things for it ...

Either

• I work until the situation is fixed to some level of satisfaction.

Or

• I find something to momentarily relieve me ... entertain or distract the pain {yeah ... I think that's accurate ... I think it is akin to pain} of the anxiety away.

It's very jacked-up ... and I am sure that it is shortening my life. Trying to resist the urge to quote an old stand-by verse of scripture but it's ringing like a bell in my mind at the moment:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

--that's Philippians 4:4-8

... much easier said than done ... but well worth dwelling upon. Rejoice. Don't worry. Dwell upon the transcendent. I'll take it for now. Gonna need to read some more later.

Diamonds in the Detritus ... or What?

Nothing special here ... just a day to start.

Once upon a time, when my faith was young and my heart for God and people was stronger, I used to fill pages with all kinds of musings about what I was doing, what I wanted to do and what I would absolutely do to "make my calling and election sure." Been a long time since those days ... I don't even think like that anymore -- I certainly don't talk like that ... not even to myself.

Heard an atheist say recently, "I don't believe in God anymore ... but I do miss Him." And a character on a TV show say, "Me and Jesus have an arrangement ... we still talk form time to time but we have both agreed to see other people." Don't think I am there yet ... but am I heading there? Is that where I want to go?

Fact is I have nearly completely fallen out with my old form of religion ... and I don't think that is either all good or all bad, it just is. Some of what I believed was very jacked-up ... destructive to me and to others ... did damage that I am dealing with now and may deal with for a long time to come. Some of it was life-saving, life-affirming, spirit-freeing. The problem is that the knot tying all the good and the bad together is complicated ... it may be inextricable at this point.

I am inclined to leave the thing alone, a bound-up steaming mess is all that's left of the part of me I used to call "faith" or "spirituality." Forgive my vernacular but it is like shit now ... that's what I have made of it ... that is how I have treated it.

"But," says the cock-eyed optimist to the astigmatic pragmatist, "there may yet be some good here." And he may be right ... because in all these years of swallowing everything that was fed me there may have been some valuable things ... hell, I know there were some valuable things. It may look like shit now ... and maybe that's all it is, really. But then again, there may be diamonds in it.

So how 'bout let's don the hazmat suit and dive into the sewer here and see if we can't retrieve something ... I don't know ...

Life-affirming.
Spirit-freeing.
Life-saving.

Worth a shot, ain't it?