I need...

If I'm being honest right now, I feel really discouraged. I could list all the things that are wrong with me and wrong in my life right now, but all of it can be summed up pretty much with this description:  I feel worthless. This semester, I am applying to graduate school and guess who has not even compiled a list of schools I plan on applying to before the deadline. I have not started to study again for the GRE because I honestly do not feel like I will get the score I want. I have  given up before even really trying because, in my eyes, I am hopeless. I am co-leading for a small group this semester, and instead of seeing this opportunity as a privilege I am so caught up in the struggles, I fail to see this opportunity to grow through these hardships. I try so hard to love my members and I am trying so hard to make them feel loved, yet I feel like I am failing miserably. I tell myself that I am trying and that I am awkward which is not false, but who would have known you could be awkward in trying to love someone. I fear the things I tell them may be wrong, the way I treat them may be wrong, that everything I am doing is wrong. There must be something wrong with me. I look at others and they have this natural gift to connect with people--those people are capable of being loved. They must be. And me? I must not be capable of having love reciprocated by most people and that is the conclusion I have drawn. It is hopeless for me. I am hopeless.

I must be feeling this way right now because inside I am longing for answers to the uncertainty of my future, longing for my wishes to be granted, and longing for love from others and in my eyes there is absolutely no answer, no progress. I am falling flat on my face day after day and forcing a smile on my face telling myself everything will be okay. I convince myself that my members love me even while I look at their blank faces. I reflect on all that I try to do for them and it isn't enough. Nothing I do is enough. I am falling apart because there is only so much I can do by myself. Everything is out of my control, the way people see me, the way my life turns out.  My life is not in my hands. And I feel like I am slipping away, fading. Aimlessly, I am trying to carry on living by my own effort and I honestly have felt so dead these past few days. When my time is consumed with serving, with studying, I look within and feel emptiness rather than joy. There must be something wrong with me. It's so hard to see the purpose in loving others, in even carrying on when I am so caught up in the fact that I am a failure.

This is reminiscent to me of a time when I cried out to God in desperation. I wanted rest, I wanted peace, I wanted an escape from darkness. Once again, I am reminded of how hopeless I am. Hear the cry of my heart, Lord, the cry inside my heart that begs for you every single day for I am poor and needy. Even when I forget the reality that I am nothing and worthless without you. While I only used to go to you in desperation, life has become so painful to go through that I am beginning to see how much in need I am of you daily. I want to draw near to you, pour out all these feelings of worthlessness and look to you for hope because it is absolutely impossible to find it in myself. I can pretend but I will never be able to become the person the world wants me to become, my parents want me to become, the person people expect of me. I feel like I fallen flat on my face and I need your strength to get up and keep living. I don't want to sit down, not doing anything, not going to you for guidance or strength and expect everything to work out. That is not faith. I want faith that all things are in Your hands, I NEED to reassure myself of your steadfast love and grace daily and I want this longing, this desire, within me to do everything with all that I can do worship you through serving, through my studies, and through my life with full assurance that you will work through me. Lord, at the end of the day, I do not need all these things the world has to offer me. Yes, I need strength, perseverance--all to say that, Lord, I need you.

Happiness?

We go on living, while we are dead inside.  Sudden sounds, memories, picture spark memories of that smile, hands that will never be linked together anymore, and the words of goodbye you were never able to say. You will never be able to say. With each passing day, you pretend everything is okay and convince yourself it is. You smile and hide the wrenching pain in your heart as you force yourself to move forward. Even when the people you love and cherish disappear from your side forever.

I wonder if that's what most people do and if living with this pain and persevering can truly make someone happy. In that case, you never really can forget the pain and move on. You carry the pain with you but never really be able to let it go. It's temporary, it's fake. After all, how can you truly experience happiness when the inside of you is dying?

I can see why it's so hard for people to find it when, in the darkest moments, it seems like it does not exist. Everything passes. And so, this is the encouragement we hold onto, fleeting hope that one day we may be happy. But even this hope that happiness waits for us can be dead, false, an illusion.

A thought then occurred to me. Is that...happiness? It seems like happiness is not as we think it is, and perhaps we are able to find happiness in this world...and for a single millisecond in the span of eternity, maybe that emotion makes us smile. Our hearts long, though, long for far more. We long for hope, hope that's everlasting, happiness that's everlasting. Maybe you can carry the pain with you in life, and true JOY awaits while all the temporary things of earth have passed. Maybe there's everlasting happiness. Maybe that's why we call it joy, because there is actually something to rejoice over. We can have joy and hope we can hold onto when we receive it from God. When we remember God's grace displayed for us, when we respond in thankfulness, and when we remember God gave us a purpose.

When we live with purpose, we are alive, no longer dead and wandering senselessly, searching for a joy that does not exist in this world.

Colorful

**I definitely recommend you watch it if you have not already, but here is my perspective of what happens in the movie so there may be spoilers for the sake of explaining.

I want my life to paint a beautiful picture. I want to live...colorfully. This simple word stirs my heart so much, and I am continually trying to find meaning in this adjective which is chosen to be the title name for a beautiful movie. It is a story of self-discovery, growing up, and finding purpose in living. In the animated film Colorful, our main character, Makoto, is introduced as as soul who has dead and is offered a second chance at life. He was told his soul will not be entered into the body of someone who also died. This body was a boy who had just committed suicide by an overdose of pills. Makoto was given the task of trying to uncover the greatest sin or mistake in his former life which led him to death. Through the movie, our main character discovers how the life of the boy he now lives is quite painful--there are broken family, broken relationships, yet there is a familiarity of the suffering he endures in both his home and at school. With the stress of thinking about life after school and of circumstances, Makoto sees how much despair this boy was in. With nowhere else to turn in a suffering life, this boy ends up with blood stained hands--hands used to end his own life. The boy convinced himself he did not have a future and took matters into his own hand by ending his story. The movie made me stop and see what the world would look like through the eyes of people who feel utterly hopeless. It is a feeling, that resonates with so many people: when life begins to fade to a bland, dark, monochrome shade. Living becomes so excruciating when you are in so much pain, when you keep failing, when you can see no point, no purpose, in life and you want so desperately for it to end. You want so desperately to disappear, for the pain to end.

Yet, this is not the end of the story. As the movie approaches to an end, almost like a semicolon both Makoto and the boy's story goes on. At the end of the movie, Makoto announces that he has found out what his former life's mistake was. He discovers that the body was his own body to begin with, that it was him who had ended his own life. He was able to see his life from an 'outside' perspective, in a sense, yet even though he saw the pain and saw his story unraveling, he identified suicide as a mistake. When the main character was able to relive his life see his life as a whole, he caught a glimpse of all the color in his life. Each stroke in his life is comprised of vibrant colors, memories of happiness, sadness, anger, all mixed to paint a beautiful picture. A beautiful piece which is life, that is still in progress of being painted only by continuing to live on.

I believe many can relate to feelings of uncertainty and helplessness when life becomes unbearable, and to me this movie sort of helps illustrates how I visualize and see my own life. We may not know our true colors, we do not know or understand where our life is headed but there is a Creator who has a plan for us. God is our artist and we can simply glance over our lives to see His mark in our life. For me, I am always turning to people for affirmation, for a sense of purpose, success, blindly seeking happiness but finding that none of it satisfies my soul which quenches after God. With God in our lives, we can progress colorfully and live colorfully by painting a beautiful picture we cannot see. We cannot even begin to imagine how much beauty is in our lives, but when Christ died on the cross his sacrifice means we can live this new, beautiful, purposeful life. We can die to ourselves, the selfish, corrupted part of us, and we have a new desire born within us, a new purpose because we are no longer utterly hopeless. There is so much beauty in that, and our paintings, our lives are all different but all a testimony of His love, His work and His glory. If life is suffocating and you see no purpose, fight the lies that your life has no purpose. THEY ARE ALL LIES. Never ever give up, and live to see His purpose and live to experience the joy that God gives us, shows us through His gift of life.