In Regards to My Purpose and Forsaken Love

Lesson: Learning to be transparent about how people make me feel

Disclaimer: This post is long and is purposely not broken up for easy reading because part of its purpose is to expose exactly who you are for those who have been acquainted with me. Though this post may make you uneasy, I must be “Unapologetically Christian” in both senses of the term if I am going to continue to experience real growth and ministry-evoking life-change. If you’re ready for the ride, then here we go.

My life is one big disappointment, and this year has been one big disappointment. Most people see nothing more than glimpses of my life—and are usually captivated by the things that inspire them and blind to who I am as a whole, what my life consists of fully, and why I do the things I do. I’d say this is because it takes effort to get to know someone who is not like you—it takes selflessness and a higher concern for outsiders than yourself and your comfortability. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe all my efforts to be transparent mean nothing, and I need to try harder to be more like everyone else. Maybe the endless hours of work and constant, mental nagging and toil do nothing more than express how deep my not being good enough for people actually goes. Maybe I need to do more—work harder. It’s not enough to live in exhaustion. To have tried so hard at life, faith, and relationships that you can never rest enough; that your body no longer responds to your authority but laughs at the thought of you being in control; that you cannot find strength do the very things you used to enjoy; that you cannot find strength to do the simple tasks that you need to do; that you cannot find pleasure in anything anymore. I must need to do elsewhere. Or do differently. Or do less. Or do more. Or do all of the above. Regardless, every positive or negative event involving my life must be due to internal circumstances despite me believing in a faith they claim is not works based or founded on American social expectations. I must still do. The epitome of a misnomer. They are never the problem; I am. These words may be confusing to whoever is reading this, but I promise if you make an effort to not be a part of the “they” being referenced in this post, you will have the ability to understand quite clearly. The fact that after reading that sentence, most of you still will not understand goes to show the accuracy of this post.

My life consists of shocking paradoxes. I love God desperately and have been known for my commitment to my Christian faith. That’s as far as most people’s understanding of who I am goes, but here is one secret—a secret that I would boldly argue does not counteract my faith in the least bit despite what you may think. I don’t feel like God loves me. As a matter of fact, many times, looking at the countless people who don’t care about me and looking at all the ways he refuses to express any form of affection toward me beyond a saving work that was accomplished thousands of years ago (a work I do not demean in the slightest), I feel like God hates me. Why, then, do I share my faith so boldly? Why do I serve him tirelessly? Why do I give my all to him in ministry, work, church, relationships, and so on?

Because I know I’m wrong. My feelings have nothing to do with the truth of whether or not God loves me. They do not have the right or substantiveness to define or factualize anything. If God is love, that means he defines it (1 John 4:7-21). I’m okay with that. It means he causes all of these horrible things in my life to work toward whatever purpose he created me for (Romans 8:28-30), and if he looks at me and says, “I made you on purpose for a purpose,” then that must mean I’m important to him, and he loves me. And I’m definitely okay with that. He doesn’t take care of me the way I want him to, but he takes good care of me in a way that expresses a love more meaningful than whatever pseudo love or affection I’d receive had he given me my way. There’s your moment—your moment to say, “Okay, Christian’s still a Christian, and he’s still not giving up, so he’s okay.” If that’s all you’re interested in, you can close this post now. I’m not giving up. … But what makes this truth incomplete is the fact that I’m NOT okay with that flawless expression of God’s love. I’ve been committed to God all these years because I am enamored with this idea of being purposed to serve the most powerful, wonderful, holy (separate), and complete being to ever exist. He is above you and me; yet he desires to have us and use us to accomplish what he has defined to be the only truly meaningful thing in this world—the redemption (saving and perfecting) of humanity (from being separated from him and therefore abolished in life everlasting to being unified with him and whole). That is purpose, and it’s a dang good one. I’m okay with centering my life around that cause forever, but I’m not okay with having nothing but endless suffering along the way. That’s not what God promised me—there’s hope; however, it is still all I’ve experienced, generally speaking, my entire life, and this year in particular has pushed me over the edge.

This will be very uncomfortable for you to read, and it’s a million times more uncomfortable for me to write, but I need to get this off my chest. I’m not going to do anything to harm myself, but if I were, my suicide note would read:

To you (every person who’s ever shaken my hand and done little to nothing to humanize and care for me):

I hope you can move on and allow this event to spark in you a change that makes my many unaccomplished dreams of bringing hope to this horrible world become a reality. I also hope you allow this to successfully challenge you to value truth more than your own comfortability, partly because I could not be comfortable and pursue purpose at the same time. All the people who care more about you being comfortable than you fulfilling purpose will tell you this is not your fault. I want you to know that is a lie. It should not make you stagnantly wallow in depression, but the truth is that every time you ignored me; every time you refused to take the first steps in caring for me; every time you refused to put forth significant effort in getting to know me; every time you rejected me; every time you left me on read; every time you watched me suffer and refused to help; every time you said, “Let me know if you need anything at all,” as if that imprecise statement means anything at all; every time you told me I was not alone yet refused to present love in a way that proves you to be someone worth opening up to; every time you refused to give love a definition and tangibly express that visibly to me; every time you looked at what may seem to be menial efforts from me to be known and get to know and care for you but were likely misunderstood examples of me giving every ounce of energy I had toward building a godly, loving, purposeful, and accountable relationship; every time you watched me give my absolute all yet refused to do your job; every time you refused to take it upon yourself to figure things out and take some of the weight off my plate and selflessly place it on yours; every time you did any of these things, a little bit of blame was placed on your plate.

To the numerous people (many of whom I respected greatly and hold high positions) who claim to be Christians yet spoke the following words to me, I hope you take an extra dose of blame and know that I’ll never forget the damage your words did to me, and I hope you’ll be reminded of every careless and hateful word you spoke: “You’re just wasting money (being in college). You’re just accruing more and more debt. That’s why your parents’ house is in foreclosure—because they can’t pay their debt.” “Your education is a math equation; you can’t possibly graduate.” “You knew the answer to that question before you walked through that door” (after asking, once again, for this person to consider the work I’d done despite my mother being diagnosed with cancer and having to work through a previously unknown illness myself). “It’s not possible for you to pass this class” (it wasn’t my fault that my doctor’s mistake had a negative effect on my body, but the issue was corrected, and I guess I did the impossible because I did in fact pass your class). “I am uncomfortable with your interaction with me. Therefore, I am sending this email as an official request for you to immediately cease contacting me…” (You are the first person other than my father that I’ve ever actually hated. Your lies and efforts to drag my name through the mud damaged me in ways you’ll never know—or care to. But being unmoved by our conversation as I saw you smile at me in the grocery store and listened to you pretend you didn’t try to slaughter my reputation shows that God’s delivered me, and while I pray life brings you many blessings, I hope those blessings are a result of immense suffering that produces a change in your vicious heart because associating the person I knew you to be with Christianity will only taint God’s mission.) “We think it’s best for you to step down, so we’re dismissing you…” (you never cared about that being my only source of joy, and you thinking you could possibly know what’s best for me without consulting me or coming alongside me to assist me in a process of betterment just shows how your flawed systems only counteract the very mission you’re committed to). “I’m sorry, we don’t help with that, but can I pray for you?” (I was homeless and expected to receive some sort of support after all I’d done for your organization, especially given the fact that you’d just released what now seems to have been a huge PR stunt in which you helped an entire family in my very situation.) “I’m sorry, you can’t use our facility or equipment because we won’t give you a key, and the equipment will depreciate faster” (Your refusal to assist my ministry despite the 20+ hours a week I’d voluntarily give toward helping you accomplish your vision shows that you care more about your organization than you do your organization’s purpose, and that’s sad). “I’ll contact you this week. We want to follow up and see how you’re doing” (this was a lie. You see me all the time. You don’t care about me). “Yes, we can get dinner together. Do you like Italian?!!” (You were just using me like every other woman I’ve been attracted to.) “No, I won’t write you a letter verifying faithful rental history because you’ve been late on rent” (I was late when someone stole my rent out the mail, and the fact that you tried to convince me you were a kind-hearted Christian after giving four college students a 30-day notice because you wanted to get as much money out of them as possible before selling your house is absurd).

I can go on, but if anyone is still reading this, you’ve heard enough. As bitter as I sound, I’m okay with all of these things—they’ve given me a more meaningful testimony that echoes God’s greatness in the midst of tragedy. Suffering produces endurance, and endurance truly does produce character (Romans 5:3-5). But the heaviness of my present has now begun to outweigh that of my future to such a degree that after 20+ years of endurance, I am no longer motivated by my future (despite being convinced of its truth), and I’ve yet to find a single person willing to commit to my betterment because everyone is busy with their own lives and their own problems. So my faith must become works-based because the problem is not that relationships fail (most things fail sometimes), but that no one is committed to ever making relationships succeed.

For these reasons and likely many, many more, I hope you remorsefully carry part of the blame, and I hope that blame pushes you to make a valiant effort to more committedly, tirelessly, and lovingly care for people and pursue God’s established purpose for humanity before I am forever forgotten by the few or the many who will briefly pause at the news of my predicament and experience a moment of sorrow and potentially shed a tear or two.