Should I Continue Believing

Some things set me off. I get a bad vibe and just get turned off and even pissed. But, I'm trying to follow the Lord. He's leading me in a certain direction and I don't like what I see. I feel like a sellout. I feel like He's guiding me through the same door everybody else is walking through. I don't like it. I look at the thing He's showing me and I see a future filled with monotony and bland regurgitation of accepted traits. I don't like it. I was told at church today to persevere. Hummph! I've never been one to sit around in a circle jerk just so I feel accepted by the crowd. I've never been one to just sit back and smile about the good times coming in when I see all the trouble brewing. I don't consider myself a pessimist, but I see things for what they are.

My estranged wife always lead me down those paths and I acquiesced. She'd want me to wear designer clothes and so I did; always feeling like a schmuck. We'd go on vacations and take about 1000 pictures to post to Facebook so that everyone knew we were having the time of our lives. Of course, it was always, "Thank Jesus for all the blessings!" I am thankful, but after finding out that we were almost $70,000 in debt, I really doubt Jesus was blessing us; we were just forcing a good time. I refuse to do that again.

When I see people having a good time and taking pictures of themselves, I immediately get a bad taste in my mouth. I know it's presumptuous, but I've been burned. I've been burned bad. People don't care about each other and I have a hard time seeing happiness as just that. I see it as narcissism.

So what is a guy like me supposed to do? I know exactly where I'm supposed to go and who I'm supposed to meet. I want to walk that line. But I also see the bland monotony gazing at me from the rafters, waiting to descend on me.

So I sit around a lot wondering what joy is. People at church seem happy, but do they have joy? What is joy? I want to be happy, but it's not the most important thing in my life. I'd rather be miserable and in pain knowing I made a difference than to be happy and amount to nothing. Happiness is bunk compared to purpose! For some reason I feel I can't have both. Like they oppose each other. Maybe because so many people put on the mask of happiness without actually possessing it. Does that mean that if I'm actually happy it will brand me as a poser, even though I'm true to the core? Why should I care? Am I the same as everybody else, just trying to prove my worth? I don't know.

I will follow though. I will persevere. If I settle into the slime of comfort and carelessness, I'll know nothing was ever worth it in the first place. I'll know following the Lord down this path was just another one of my fantastical adventures to gain understanding and purpose. If I settle down again in some suburban wasteland of isolation and salaciousness, I'll know I deserve the future burning tortures of hell.

War is hard, but peace is unbearable.