projection.perception.perspective

who are you? no, but really. who are you? does it seem that when you look deep into what i call "the abyss of your soul" you can really find yourself? when someone asks you how your day is, do you deflect and give the usual answer "fine"? do you really truly know who you are and what you are capable of? good OR bad?

i have a thought. we don't want to know.

we like to pry into others lives so that we can attach ourselves to a reality that might describe ourselves, for we do not know who we are. i mean c'mon why else would the daily coming and goings of random people who you have no relations with become the highest sought after information of an entire nation?

i have traveled to the depths of my known self. i know a lot more about me than a lot of others know about themselves. i know the heights that i can rise to and the depths to which i can fall. i understand what turns me on, what makes me laugh, what tantalizes my five senses and what brings a dark cloud over my soul. i know these things because i have pushed my limits, seen the outer edges and have lived to tell about it.

was it worth it?

what is knowledge? just because i know these things, does it bring me to any understanding you ask?

no.

not on my own.

all that questioning left me with more questions. it left me trying once again to "be better". to live "right". to "live like it was my last day" or was it my first? it left me desperate. after all this living all i got to was the realization that i am made incomplete. there was something missing. there was something rotting deep inside of me, that would not go away.

i had a deep longing inside. one that would not be filled. it was like a deep void. a nothingness that only something bigger than me, bigger than another human, bigger than a mountain walk, bigger than another bottle of rum, bigger than any pleasure on this planet could fill.

i was empty. nothing could fix me. permanent brokenness was all i would ever attain.

i want you to look deep inside yourself. deep into the chasms of your soul, deep into the wild darkness that you might find yourself in and ask yourself a question or two: have you, truly, ever been happy? not the happiness that you might find at a birthday party or even at a wedding, but have you ever been complete? have you ever felt comfortable in your own skin? in a moment when everything clicks into place and its good? not even good, but dare i say...perfect?

i had never felt that. in all my years i had never felt an unimaginable joy in my life. i had seen it on others faces, but i had never felt it on my own. i thought they were all faking it.

i want you all to know, to understand, to see, that this is not a joke. this is real. there is a moment in time when things click into place and for the first time you can actually see.

there is something so wrong with the world, that it took a BEING from outside our understanding to step in and make it right. i think if i could understand it all, then i would be more apt to disbelieve. it had to be something bigger than me to make things right. to help me. to free me. maybe one day i will have more insight. i will have a better way of saying it. until then i will continue to fumble in the art of communication. i just want to help you see, you don't have to settle.

never again will you have to project yourself into the answer of "fine". you can be amazing, and mean it! it is really ok, to not be ok, but please don't stay there. don't do that to yourself.

i will leave this thought on the table, because it has changed my life: i pray that you can also see.

Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.

Because of this decision we don't evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don't look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We're Christ's representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God's work of making things right between them. We're speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he's already a friend with you.

How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God. 2 corinthians 5:14-21 msg