In which our hero attempts to relax by writing *for fun*....
As finals approach, I am feeling a little tired and stressed out. Between regular peeves, difficult/annoying class work, and extra-ordinary experiences; my brain is shot. I'm always about five minutes of the wrong train of thought away from weeping brokenly. It's not that I am generally morose but if, in the course of a day, I become depressed it is difficult for me to return to the happy mean of contentment.
I walk around campus smiling; it's a policy, I smile, people smile back, and that makes me happy. This system is very nice, people recognize you, you improve their day, they improve yours, a very reciprocal relationship. I say 'good morning' including their names if I can, just so they know that I thought their names worth knowing, a small thing for me that means a lot to them.
When I sit in a group of people, I try my darnedest to make them laugh. Nothing makes me happier than to hear other people laugh at me. It often involves a more than slightly eccentric display on my part, but those happen anyway, might as well make them aimed at making them laugh.
These things make me happy. They make long days feel short. They make me feel at home.
Sometimes things like that are all I have. Sometimes the day has collapsed beneath my feet, leaving me breathless and bruised. Sometimes I feel like a fraud, a college student making feints at being a musician; making the same mistakes over and over, failing to follow simple instructions; disappointing those who I want to please the most.
On days like those, I only have three things going for me: My mama, my peeps, and my God. These three keep me sane. When I'm scared, my mama comforts me; when I'm lonely, my peeps cheer me and provide me with happy conversation; when I am lowest, beyond the reach of the aforementioned, then I have my God, comforting me with a Word sweeter than life, and a Peace greater than death.
I've shifted all over the place tonight. My mind is elsewhere. It is now December, as of three minutes before I wrote those words. The year, like men, dwindles and dies, leaving behind the memories and morose, loves and losses. The New year is no more a beginning than it is an ending. Until God sees fit to brings about the new Anno Domini the world will keep spinning much as it always has.
But Christmas is coming. Advent, where we are bold to sing such things as "Prepare the Royal Highway" and "Savior of the Nations" a time of hope and prayer as we look forward to the coming of Christ.
We do not celebrate a cute baby in a manger. We celebrate a King taking up His throne. Enthroning Himself in our flesh. We celebrate a Child that already bore the great weight of our transgression. Before He could raise His holy head, He dragged the cross to Golgatha. There was nothing that we could offer Him, so He offers us more. He leaves us His very Body and Blood, not that we would remember Him, but that His Father would remember Him for our sakes. When the crowd says, "His blood be on us and on our children" we were, by grace, granted just that. Christ marks the doors of our hearts with His Blood, God remembers His loving mercies, and the angel of death passes o'er.
But I am tired. I have been already over long in ending. You have probably been noticing this for some time, yes? But time, like depression or joy, is transitory. Life is not lived in sensations or in seconds, but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
Anywho, I am finished. Thanks for reading.
