Incoherent Babbling...

I suck at life.

How do I get out of this?

I know that God is the only answer, but it’s like, I pray, but can’t mean it. I can’t fully believe that He is sufficient and my highest good. I can’t surrender myself to His control, because I’m selfish, self-absorbed, ambitious, individualistic, stubborn.

I hate myself for all those things. But I cherish them too. Losing my stubbornness might mean losing my identity. Can’t have that, right?

Who cares? Why is my “identity” so stinkin’ important if it sucks? Why cherish my personality traits, when they are undesirable? When they make life harder? When they put barriers between me and God, not to mention between me and the people I love the most?

I just don’t want to change. I don’t want to make sacrifices. I don’t want my life to go a direction that isn’t my first choice. I don’t want to be broken, convicted, confronted. I want to be ME, and then everyone else love, adore, and cater to me.

And ultimately, that attitude is the result of not believing the Gospel. Truly believing the Gospel, believing in God’s ultimate beauty and worth, just kind of naturally makes self seem unimportant. I know this. But I have a hard time arriving at that perspective. From my concrete, here-and-now, self-absored perspective, it just looks like life is too hard. I lash out in frustration, screaming, “Why can’t life be easy? Why can’t I be happily self-absorbed and immature?”

Shallow self-absorption doesn’t bring fulfillment. I’ll never live life to the fullest, or experience joy, as long as I think that way. I’ll kill myself chasing after things that have no true value, and then wonder why life seems so empty.

I need help. Help in thinking differently. Help in seeing things the way they really are. I pray, but can’t figure out how to articulate what I need. The Bible says that in such times, the Holy Spirit groans in our behalf. I need that.

Not that I deserve any such attention. I’m a dirtbag, I really am.

A dirtbag that God chose to redeem, for some crazy reason that I will never understand. He showered His love on me when I had done (and still have done) nothing to deserve it. He offers joy, and life, and love that I can’t even comprehend. And this is the only thing that gets me through times like this, or life in general.

I have no worth, except in what Christ has given me. And that is the greatest worth of all.

Out of Fuel

I've been masquerading as an extrovert lately. In my new routine this semester, I spend tons of time every single day with people...teaching, counseling, hanging out. I love it, and I love exploring new possibilities (Me? Teach?), but a large part of me is still the reclusive bookworm I always have been. Let's face it, I'm an introvert. After several weeks of a very active and people-oriented life, I can't take it anymore. I need to be a misanthrope this Friday night.

I skipped the Homecoming bonfire tonight, even though I have never gone, and this was my last chance to go as a student at Tech. It sounds sad, to say it that way, but I couldn't have enjoyed it if I had gone. I've just been stretched too thin. I needed to stay home for once, to put on my PJs at 7:00 and just enjoy the peace and quiet, the hum of the refrigerator, the creak of my rocking chair, and the occasional swish of a turned page.

Is it supremely selfish to be a hermit? I am afraid it is, but I can only go so far without crashing. I am sure that most of you introverts out there can relate at some level, but times like this make me wonder what the equivalent feeling is for someone who is extroverted and therefore can't relate. Do they feel this same desperate feeling of almost not existing after being alone for long periods of time?

Well, that's my bit of navel-gazing for the night. I almost forgot I had a navel.

Senioritis, or Something

I had the craziest thing happen to me today.

Well, it wasn't so much an outward thing that happened, so much as a thought that ran through my head. I was tempted to quit school.

Don't worry, I have absolutely no intention of throwing away all my hard work for the past 3 years. I fully intend to get this degree. But it was just one of those thoughts, that you don't even entertain seriously, but can't help but be attracted to. "I'm not pursuing a career in Classics. I just want to be a writer and have kids or something. I don't need a degree. I could really use more time to research/write the things I've been wanting to write..."

And so on.

Maybe this doesn't seem earth-shattering to most of you (most people I know gripe about school at some point or another), but for me, this is unprecedented.

My life has pretty much revolved around school, for years. It wasn't just a means to an end (I've really never been career-driven), it was an end in itself. I devoted my entire high school career to earning the scholarships I would need to pay for college; and once I got here, school remained the number one priority. I devoted the vast majority of my energies to achieving perfection in every single class; partly because I enjoy learning things (I honestly do), but mostly because I was driven by an unhealthy perfectionism (the 4.0 was an absolute must) and a need for some kind of goal to direct my life.

Last semester I was dead set on going to grad school after I finished my degree, not so much because I need a master's degree, but just because I was terrified of having to deal with a life in which all I had was a pharmacy job or some other repetitive, endless career. Life without school was this terrifying vaccuum.

In recent months, God's really been showing me just how skewed my priorities have been. (That first B I earned last semester, and my completely irrational devastation that resulted, kind of forced me to reevaluate.) I've come to recognize that I've been pretty much insane this whole time. I used to justify it in my mind, and with other people, by saying that my relentless study was the result of a desire to glorify God in what I was doing, and there may have been a grain of truth there, but I was mostly just trying to find fulfillment in school in itself. As nutty as that sounds. (Seriously, I don't expect you guys to identify with this situation. I'm not the only one who thinks I'm crazy.)

So today, when I was tempted to quit school, I was a bit disturbed on one hand, but pretty encouraged on the other. Wanting to be through means that I'm getting over this need for school as some sort of crutch. It means I view other things in my life as more important. Maybe I've turned a corner!

Or maybe I'm just a senior. :)

My Incredibly Complex Personality

I finally got around to taking the Jung typology test, and I'm highly amused/impressed by the accuracy of the results. If you've ever had a hard time figuring me out, read on.

"To outsiders, INTJs may appear to project an aura of "definiteness", of self-confidence. This self-confidence, sometimes mistaken for simple arrogance by the less decisive, is actually of a very specific rather than a general nature; its source lies in the specialized knowledge systems that most INTJs start building at an early age. When it comes to their own areas of expertise -- and INTJs can have several -- they will be able to tell you almost immediately whether or not they can help you, and if so, how. INTJs know what they know, and perhaps still more importantly, they know what they don't know.

INTJs are perfectionists, with a seemingly endless capacity for improving upon anything that takes their interest. What prevents them from becoming chronically bogged down in this pursuit of perfection is the pragmatism so characteristic of the type: INTJs apply (often ruthlessly) the criterion "Does it work?" to everything from their own research efforts to the prevailing social norms. This in turn produces an unusual independence of mind, freeing the INTJ from the constraints of authority, convention, or sentiment for its own sake.

INTJs are idea people. Anything is possible; everything is negotiable. Others may see what is and wonder why; INTJs see what might be and say "Why not?!" They are rather rare, comprising no more than, say, one percent of the population. INTJs can rise to management positions when they are willing to invest time in marketing their abilities as well as enhancing them, and (whether for the sake of ambition or the desire for privacy) many also find it useful to learn to simulate some degree of surface conformism in order to mask their inherent unconventionality.

Personal relationships, particularly romantic ones, can be the INTJ's Achilles heel. While they are capable of caring deeply for others (usually a select few), and are willing to spend a great deal of time and effort on a relationship, the knowledge and self-confidence that make them so successful in other areas can suddenly abandon or mislead them in interpersonal situations.
This happens in part because many INTJs do not readily grasp the social rituals; for instance, they tend to have little patience and less understanding of such things as small talk and flirtation (which most types consider half the fun of a relationship). To complicate matters, INTJs are usually extremely private people, and can often be naturally impassive as well, which makes them easy to misread and misunderstand. Perhaps the most fundamental problem, however, is that INTJs really want people to make sense. :-) This sometimes results in a peculiar naivete', paralleling that of many Fs -- only instead of expecting inexhaustible affection and empathy from a romantic relationship, the INTJ will expect inexhaustible reasonability and directness."

Are there any other INTJs in the house? ;)