Maybe I Have Rabies (at least then I'd have an excuse)

I try really hard to not let this journal turn into a means for complaint and discontent. It does help to spill out stress onto a page every once-in-a-while, but when that becomes the sole motivating force of expression it evolves into a cycle, feeding itself so that it can be sustained. Life is pretty cloudy right now though. It has been for a few days and I'm trying so hard to defeat my flesh and put off my natural tendencies of dealing with this adversity, but I'm a thickheaded hard case. The semester hasn't even started yet and I feel so defeated, but not by school. I'm sinking into my comfort groove. I'm about to close up and turn on the autopilot because it's easy when my actions are based upon the success or failure of business. When I remove all of the emotional aspects in a situation I can make really hard decisions and not feel a thing. Right now I'm feeling everything and it's driving me crazy. I feel like I've become too lax because I've made myself vulnerable. And I keep asking myself "Why, why did I do that again?"

But this is not what I want at all. It's a selfish, self-preserving reaction that costs the people around me everything and me nothing. I just don't know sometimes. I feel like I've grown up and have learned from the past well enough to not have to go through this again, but for some reason this never gets easier. There are just parts about my being that are not tame at all. For example, my wallet was stolen yesterday and I saw the high school punks that did it. They were in a group of six and so was I. Viking, Matt, and I go and play pickup ultimate frisbee almost every Sunday at this football field a few blocks away from our house, but this Sunday we were interrupted. They came and started hanging around our stuff and I got this funny feeling to go and take a break to check on my pile of crap and sure enough, my wallet was gone. I confronted them about it and one of them, their ringleader, started cussing me out and all that crap that I remember high schoolers do. I suppressed what I wanted to do and let him talk. He threatened to fight me and all of his friends got really nervous at his invitation, after all, we were huge compared to them. I wanted to so bad though. I wanted to call him out of his comfort zone and beat his ass in front of his friends and take my wallet back. I wanted to because I knew I could and that if I had control over the situation I would make sure that he and who ever else wanted to tangle would be very very sorry. I would do the job that his parents obviously were not.

Where does that come from? That's not who I am at all, but yet, given the correct circumstance, it's a real internal problem that I have to be aware of and pray for deliverance from. What hurt worse was that the sermon at church in the morning, just a few hours prior, was about love. My thoughts of violence have been making me feel really short in retrospect. I know what I ended up doing was the right thing. They were just kids and it was just a wallet. It was an inconvenience and they still have time to grow and learn. But I didn't have that satisfaction that one would hope to receive after righteous action.

I don't know, hopefully someone positive will step into their lives and influence and nurture them where they have been so harshly wounded as to behave that way. But as for me, I felt incapable, and my Grace is greater than that.

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And that's all I'll reveal about this funk I've fallen into. Everything else is a little more "light sensitive" if you will. I know I'm supposed to learn from all of this, but that's a pretty tough thing to do. I guess we'll just see what happens this week.

Peace and love.