I'll be honest. The attitude change thing has helped a lot the last few days, but looking at tomorrow...makes me want to cry and runaway. Despite the attitude change, I still don't want to do it. Not as often as I'll have to the next two weeks anyway. A week like last week I'll do. It makes me feel like such a complainer though, after reading Bruchko. He went through things I probably never will, and it makes me feel like the things I complain about and am upset about are stupid. I feel like I ought to be tougher. Working at the pharmacy isn't life or death, isn't hinging on the chance of contracting amoebic dysentery or intestinal worms or being injured in the jungle by five inch thorns or jaguars. I don't want to say that I feel like I shouldn't be there, because I don't know if that's true...it's really that I don't WANT to be there. I don't WANT to do it. And, I guess I don't want to have to work there. I want to do something I love. I want to believe that I have just as much of a pointed purpose for my life as Bruce Olson with the Motilones. I don't know why it has never felt like that for me, or for most people I know. I don't want to be numbed down enough to just get by, just do what I have to to pay the bills. I feel like in the modern world it's extremely difficult to do anything with pointed passion. I feel like I can't escape the modernity of life in the "real" world, whatever that actually means. I feel like I can't really live with all the demands of what it costs to possess such a life. That doesn't seem fair at all. It's all feeling more and more like a venus fly trap- like the walls are slowly moving in and before I realize that- yes- they ARE in fact moving in on me, it's too late to climb out.
That's not really how it is, is it?
It's really hard to see the sun through the clouds. It's easier to point at the dirt and say, "hey- what's with the dirt? that stuff isn't good for me and it hurts" than to see the skin beneath it and believe that it's still there and can be healthy again. We focus on the gross things, probably because we have a natural feeling of animosity toward anything we think isn't right- toward anything that hurts us or causes us pain. And being that at least half of us are "fixers", well, our attention is immediately guided to what needs fixing. For me, though, I tend to focus on it so hard that I forget there's anything else. Instead of fixing anything, I end up getting stuck in it- so much so that the dirt becomes reality and normalcy for me instead of the salve that is health and happiness. It's a brutal battle.
Bruchko may have battled sickness, fatigue, death, and outside threats, but I battle self-induced isolation, depression, anxiety, hopelessness. I guess this is the jungle I live in, and the people I need to reach may look differently and have different experiences and backgrounds, but they're not different from me deep down. Jesus loves us both the same. I may have to risk mental and spiritual sickness, fatigue, death, and outside threats when running to and from the jungle. It's going to suck. But I do know that, while it seems unlikely in the present and we doubt, God takes care of us. He looks after us and will protect us and guide us if we call on Him for help and trust. It's a different kind of jungle, but it is just that. A jungle.
On top of all that, I still need help. And that's okay.
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