End of Year Emo Blizzard

This is probably my last blog of 2018 with several trips and holiday mayhem happening this month. It’s been a phenomenal year of travels around the country, around the world even, meeting and reuniting with some truly beautiful people. The Internet — how does the Internet keep introducing me to more and more fantastic folks?

Oh, also. 2018 has been my worst year as an adult. No other year comes close. Relational and emotional ravaging to depths never before plunged. Arguments, anger, despair, confusion, and a constant gutting prayer to God: “What the hell are you doing?”

It’s been a brutal year.

As 2018 winds down, I find myself in my most emotionally raw, volatile state of the year, probably ever. The North Carolina skies opened with a blizzard this week, and how I wanted this snowy downpour to cleanse it all away. Drown it in the banks, and when it all melts let something else sprout there instead.

Please. God.

As I continue counseling, I find myself facing some hard and sobering truths: that I am horrific on myself. I am not worthy of love — masculine love. And because I am not worthy among men, I close the gate to my soul to them. I fend for myself. I do not instinctually look to others. Always need to make sure my oxygen mask is on before realizing there even is another oxygen mask for my neighbor.

I suffer silently and do not want to be a burden. Want to be seen as responsible and strong. Admirable, even.

Wow, look at Tom. What a Christian. What a warrior. What a man. What a faithful guy.

In truth, my faith does feel more secure than it ever has. But also the most frustrated. It’s been a year of not just dismantling my long built idols of male friendship and fantasy addiction but burning the fuck out of them. Until every last stubborn ash floats heavenward.

I’ve been recommitting intentional parts of my day to God. Parts that would normally go to social media or unneeded extra sleep. I’ve also started swearing more in journals and prayers with him after being neat and tidy for three decades. God has heard a lot of f-words from me this year.

I told my counselor that I feel like Charlie Brown as this God-Lucy pulls away the football from me, again and again. Chasing these magnificent visions he places in my heart, things I can’t ignore or escape, only to dash after them and feel the earth splitting just as I arrive.

Good things — grand things — happen each time in my chases. A church community that baptizes me. A book that reaches hundreds, a blog that reaches thousands. Friends — the dearest, love-them-it-hurts friends.

But bad things have also happened in my chases. Devastating things, even. A church that splits. A book of messy secrets I can never take back. Friends who have fallen away and God it hurts so much.

This is life, I’m learning. The dream and the nightmare. The triumph and the tragedy. Things go good for a while . . . and then things go not so good.

Footballs that get kicked and footballs that leave me sucker-punched on the earth.

And this truth that remains. A truth I can’t shake.

God is still God.

Jesus told me there’d be trouble coming. This isn’t some big secret. Not some bait-and-switch where I thought this life of following him meant never crying gut-tears into my pillow ever again.

No. Let the salty rivers flow.

Whenever I watch Survivor, my favorite show, I often feel visceral things for the most emotional castaways. The ones crying about having to lie to their best friends to get ahead or that their best friend didn’t invite them on a pizza reward. Usually females, though some males here and there.

Get over it, I think. You are so dramatic.

But I’m realizing that if I were ever to play Survivor, I’d be the most dramatic castaway of all, male or female. Crying and crying and feeling and feeling, unable to stop, these feelings like blood in my veins and breath in my lungs, always pumping, always flowing, always having their way with me until inevitably I numb them in unhealthy ways.

As I learn not to cope with my feelings unhealthily, fucking feeling them, letting them just have their way with me before passing on, I can see them for what they are. Indicators that something is wrong. Something is off. Something is great. Something is just right. Something is devastating and something is awe-inspiring.

When I’m not numbing these indicators, not ignoring them or feeling shame for these feelings God created in me, created in all of us, I see his vision even clearer through the tears. A vision to chase.

One that becomes less about me, less about happiness, and more about others, more about purpose.

Lonely people who need community.

Unwritten stories that need an author.

A numbed and broken humanity who also need horizons to chase.