Her name is Danica Jennings. And she always seems to have the perfect life. Her mother, Della Connor, always has the perfect things to say about her on Facebook. She has a perfect brother and a perfect job. I’m quite sure she even has a perfect boyfriend. Perfect friends, perfect flashing smiles, perfect hair days. Okay, I’m sure all of these facets of her life aren’t perfect, but they seem to be. She loves her job and loves her life and loves God and her dog and her wardrobe. She tweets about it constantly, how God has blessed her so much, and she’s thankful to have such amazing friends, and I’ve over here like:
Me: Did you see that?
Hannah Bear: *sits motionless*
Me: I know. It’s like her life is too perfect.
Okay, so I don’t actually hold conversations with a stuffed animal I’ve had since I was six, but the point is that I may as well for all the time I spend in my own little bubble when I’m not at work. “I’m glad you and Brittany went out tonight,” Emily said to me the other night. “I don’t think you spend time with other people enough.” Sitting back in front of my computer in my room, I realized just how high I’d scored on the Lame-ometer. She was right. I wanted to say, “Did you stop to think that maybe I like spending my time alone?” But we both know she would’ve given me her Doubtful Look, and, anyway, I could feel the words crumbling under the weight of their falseness as they cropped up from my brain.
For a while, I’ve felt a bit of a redheaded stepchild. Everyday has felt like another day God has turned his nose up at me. I never understood why some people thought God couldn’t possibly love them until recently. When I read about people doing things for others, helping with organizations, heck, starting organizations, going to church, tweeting and updating their Facebook statuses with quotes from the Bible, and praising Jesus in their own words, and inferring just how happy life is for them makes me feel like I have every reason in the world to be unloved by God. I mean, I know He’s like my father, He’s the Ultimate Dad, and your dad is supposed to love you no matter what, but lately I’ve felt detached from Him in a way I’ve never experienced before. It honestly feels as though He’s just not there. Poof — gone.
What the really horrible part is, though, is that I know it is my own fault that I feel this way. I know when feelings such as these come up, I’m supposed to pull out my wand and say, “Down Satan, you mangy cur!” But, I’ve been letting them stir. Today during my lunch break, I went and dropped off a deposit at my bank and then parked at work to lie out in my car the rest of the time. I dropped my seat back and stared out the windshield at my building. You did this to yourself, you know? I turned over. Brittany was going downtown to have dinner with a friend later and I was going home. Alone.
It really wasn’t about not having a lot of friends to do things with, it was the Godlessness of my life that was getting to me. Or, the Godlessness I was feeling. And then I realized I was making this into a thing. A thing that did not have to get so blown out of proportion. I wondered if maybe too much of myself was internalized. I, by nature, internalize almost everything, but I wondered if I’d internalized all the wrong things, the things that, if an external part of me, could grant me the things I sought in life. But I don’t know what those things might be nor how to go about externalizing them. Right now, my life feels overcast and I want it very much to be cloudless and sunny. Okay, well, maybe a few white, fluffy, whale-sized clouds, because they’re cute and I like to name their shapes, but no rain clouds.
Later, I will have realized that the wrong internalization will have been my attention, which has been heavily directed at myself throughout my life. I will have realized that I still reek of selfishness and self-absorption and that those are the causes of my dismay. I will understand that God hasn’t really left me and that, of course, He still loves me, and that it is I who had shrugged Him off, cast Him aside. I will understand that the fact I’m even having these issues with my life right now is because God made me to be more, to be better, and I am consistently failing at taking my true place in life, and that is what is really bothering me, even if I don’t always realize it.
