The air I breathe

You've come to a moment of your life in which you think you've reached a point that has no road lying beyond it--an electric fence that becomes unavoidable, and you walk right into it, blind and helpless. A heavy, ominous feeling floods through every part of you. It feels like the life that you thought you knew never existed, because you have mistaken it for something else, and it taunts you for your naivety.

Everything is quiet. Tears come to your eyes; sometimes you start to sob, and sometimes the pain wells up inside your chest and makes your throat hurt like hell. Sorrow overcomes you, and it's all you know.

You don't know whether to scold yourself for being so pitiful or to scorn the world for making you feel this way. Anger and shame coexist, working together to catalyze either an explosion or an implosion, or some combination of the two. The intensity of this feeling gradually becomes less and less, pushing you into the negative and almost stopping your heart. Everything is once again, quiet.

You begin to ask questions.

Why? Why did You make me this way? Good things happen to other people, why aren't they happening to me? Is it something I'm doing wrong? Do I not talk enough? Laugh enough? Am I not smart enough? Beautiful enough? "Christian" enough? Why didn't You make me differently? Will this really ever change? Am I even good enough for things to change? Am I just not enough?

God is silent.
You are silent.

"Faith"........
That's not an answer, that's a concept.
What is faith?
Believing in something I can't see or that I don't have any physical evidece for.
What don't you believe in?
I don't believe You'll ever satisfy me.

Silence.
You realize that faith is a fundamental part of being a disciple of Christ, and you are once again stopped dead in your tracks. You also realize that if you are concerned that you won't receive the kind of satisfaction you're hoping for in this life, then you certainly don't know anything about the satisfaction that God offers His Children.

You stand up and brush yourself off. You are alive. Your heart is beating. Your lungs are forcing oxygen into your body and is emitting carbon dioxide, but not by itself. God is pumping your heart. He is breathing into your lungs. The funny thing is, he aways has been the reason you are alive. And you realize that submitting to God, having faith in Him, and being a disciple of Jesus Christ does not only lie in acknowledging that He is the only reason for your physical and spiritual existence. It also lies in submitting to God's desire to be the one and only Reason who truly compels you to wake up in the morning.

So you awake.
You are alive, after all of this. You have not been defeated. But your shield was not your sanity and your sword was not your intellect. Your backbone is not the one made from osteoblasts and your wings weren't a product of evolution. God is your shelter, and your reasoning does not stem from human intellect but from the Holy Spirit. You have been weak, but through Jesus Christ you are strong. You are called to soar in a future of hope and in close discipleship with Jesus, not ever knowing the big picture but being content in mimicking His footsteps.

The saying goes, "What does not kill you can only make you stronger." Superficial strength can come from knowledge harvested from experience, but human wisdom is foolishness to God. You have been tired, almost dead, and wiithout the will to continue to exist, but God uses your weakness to bring glory to Himself, being Strength through you.

And you live. You take steps. You are a disciple, not worrying about living up to any standards but the ones Jesus, your Rabbi provides. And you are whole.