Mine Forever.

I am happy, more than. So that would be joyful. This physical and spiritual place I am now, is one I have never experienced before. I am content and okay and sometimes lonely and happy and known to the core. Just Because I feel something doesn't mean it is factual and it also doesn't mean it needs to be justified. Not feeling because it can't be rationalized will never stop the feelings, it ignores them until you are paralyzed with fear of not being able to breathe. My first panic attack was at one am in a liquor store parking lot because it was the only place that had lights.

The mornings are grayer and the nights are beginning before my stomach growls for dinner. The days are shorter and the sun is now just an acquaintance no longer a companion. These feelings are larger than I feel fit to talk about. Calling it a feeling doesn't feel urgent enough. Not for how invasive and abrasive it is. It is so encapsulating that it comes in and nearly replaces your soul with itself. It reminds me of that one person, the one who knows you too well, but you no longer want them to. There is a pit in your stomach when they two step through your mind. My chest is hollow and I feel like I could sink into myself. There is no getting rid of them, you two know each other far too deep. Neither party is innocent. Each uses it to the other's disadvantage. Playing each other like puppets on strings. The problem with anxiety though, is it's not a person. There is no tangibleness to it’s being. It's not someone you can distance yourself from.

So, you can't distance yourself from the feeling- but in hopes to, you distance yourself from the ones who are close to you. In efforts to stop the cycle, you perpetuate it. Like a house of mirrors. The reflection is always true- but one is a phony barrier that doesn't stop the many ongoing levels of introspection. Every revelation that is had is simply a result of a chemical imbalance feeding you false facts about the ones around you. Always placing you as the victim or the antagonist, never a rational middle ground. Always with the same terrifying feeling of self sabotage. Self awareness isn't the same thing as being equipped to heal. Most of the time it feels more indebting.

I wonder how deeply Jesus felt his anxiety or loneliness. His anguish on the mount of olives, according to the scripture of Luke, could only be categorized as deep panic. Maybe more so anxiety, considering his entire life and being was building up to this one moment. Being the prince of peace, he could have shut it off, taken this burden off of himself. Being a man, the father gave him strength from an angel. What's interesting to me, though, is that this angel didn't alleviate any of these feelings. The angel simply gave him strength to keep praying. To keep crying out the fathers name. “Abba!” I can hear him saying. “You know how terrified I am and yet you know what is best and you are saying it's this.”. Being a man I know he did and being God I struggle to understand how he sat in it. Selfishly and sheepishly I want to think he didn’t ever feel this way. Even though he spent three days in hell, separated from grace and goodness. Separated from the Holy part of himself. That is the most lonely place to be. Cut off from the only whole part of yourself. The very loosely worded ‘good’ parts of yourself. Having every act of unloveliness done to you by those you've unraveled yourself to. Being naked and holy and drenched in shame that was intended for the ones who were made in the image of him, but bore no resemblance to him. Just like anxiety wreaks havoc on relationships and ideas, it was too late when they had realized what they had done to the one whom they were meant to love. The ground shook and they wept.

Just as they knew He was God and He could never actually have an end, I know this feeling as an everlasting moment that will not continue.

Linear thinking is great, until you realize that nothing in life is a straight shot. I don't think I have to be happy to be joyful. To be happy could mean I would merely have to be doing something I enjoy. To be joyful is to know that it is mine forever. Our experiences that we are dealt in life aren't random. God has planned each breath and movement I will ever have. Meaning, he created my brain and soul with the purpose of knowing him. In the spring when I no longer remember the harsh side effects of the cold, I feel him surrounding me like the fresh spring water does when I jump in. In the winter, when I feel the light fading- i feel him surrounding me like an iv catheter in a vein. Different, but both present nonetheless. For different times there are different ways in which he will be revealed to me. In both, I feel joy.

Anxiety and loneliness are the makers of bitterness and Christ is the maker of all things new. He rose again and brought Mercy and freedom to the same ones who tried to end the one who never even had a beginning. It's comforting to know that he was, and is, and is to come and the things of now will not be.