"it's not my fault I'm such an awful mess and more."

Why does everything in my life seem like such a battle? I don't think there is one thing going on in my life right now that doesn't require me to fight with all of my might. I do not ask out of complaint, but I ask out of pure wonder. It's not all bad I suppose, but it is tiring! I know very well that the life of a follower of Christ comes with risks, persecution, and hardship. It is not something you choose to live your life by if you want life to be easy. I don't want my life to be EASY. But shouldn't some things be a little easy...? Because it seems like nothing is easy anymore, nothing. Not one bit. I'm fighting for friendship and humanity, I'm fighting for love, I'm fighting for the principles and the people, I'm fighting for morals and ethics, I'm fighting for trust and respect. I'm fighting against consumerism, against hate and torture and murder and doubt, I'm fighting against lies and disease and emotion. Everything I'm fighting for and everything I'm fighting against leads me to one very weary road of exhaustion. But I won't stop, I swear. Nothing will ever make me stop. Maybe. Maybe except death... that would probably make me stop..... only probably, though.

It's funny how someone who really hates dissent and arguing and battles and war pretty much deals with it all on a daily basis. I never really feel the peace and harmony and love that I believe in so much. Sometimes I get glimpses of them. But they never last long. I guess that's why true faith is believing in the unseen.

I want a gentle revolution. I want a worldwide transformation. I want to disturb the order of society and infect the world with God's love. I want pop culture to suck it. I want a lifetime of love for others and ourselves. I want to give and not receive and be satisfied with that. I want unity and interdependence to outshine survival of the fittest. I want to love the hard people, the child molesters and the physically deformed and the Hitlers and the Osama Bin Ladens of the world. I want to know what makes the USA the best country in the world and why people are so proud to wear red, white, and blue while we murder and torture humans just like us. Sometimes I lie in bed in the middle of the night and get the urge to purge my entire wardrobe and live in the same outfit every day if it will help clothe people who have nothing. Other times I think I would miss my pretty dresses, though. I want to be pure in thought and body and soul. Sometimes I wonder if that is possible. I want people to come first, not profit. I want to never sell anyone anything ever again. I want one man to show me the way God says men should treat women and to stick around. I want to honor my husband someday and never stray from the sanctity of marriage. I want reconciliation to overcome all the brokenness. I want people to know that no one is beyond redemption. I want to get inside your head and rearrange all your doubts and perceptions so that things would make sense and this would work out between us. I want to close my eyes and not be afraid to open them up to see what is in front of me. I want to love people until the sun dies.

I don't feel like I fit into this lifetime, this world. I feel like a circle that is supposed to be a square. I don't want to live the American Way. Sometimes I think capitalism makes sense, and other times it makes me cringe. I wonder how some people have so much while other people have so little. Sometimes I cry about it, thinking about the weight of the world on my shoulders like I somehow manage to do way too much of the time. I'm no Jesus, but sometimes I feel like your suffering is my suffering along with my own suffering, and then I feel that all of that suffering doesn't even come close to the amount of suffering that's going on all over the world. Maybe I don't belong in America. America is eating me alive along with all the fried food it can produce. I feel like my body is here on earth, but my soul is somewhere very distant. My soul faints and cries out for heaven. I am really feeling the weight of the part in the Bible (if I had my Bible in front of me I could say where exactly it says it, but I don't), where God says this is not our home, we are foreigners in this world because our real home is with Him. So we should feel strange living here. Oh, please bring me home, Lord.