wallowing

I wrote this journal entry yesterday morning and thought I'd share...
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Today I am angry, for what feels like no good reason. Last night I succumbed to the “wallowing 20s” – feeling sorry for myself and everyone around me for the holding pattern our lives often seem to be in. I drove into work today because a) I was late for the #61 bus, b) I didn’t want to wait for the #3 or take the Hopkins shuttle and c) I wanted to feel some level of control over something in my life.

In many ways, I'm tired of waiting - on figuring out what I "really" want to do with my life/what I want to be when I grow up, on relationships, on feeling like I have a place in the world and knowing why it's important. I am waiting to stop feeling sorry for myself.

I never thought I’d end up here, never thought I’d be standing where I am.
I guess I kinda thought that it would be easier than this, I guess I was wrong.

I tried to climb your steps, I tried to chase you down, I tried to see how low I could get down to the ground.
I tried to earn my way, I tried to take this mind, you better believe that I am trying to leave this…
(lyrics from “Sick Cycle Carousel” by Lifehouse).

Then comes the kicker, from today’s My Utmost for His Highest (courtesy of http://www.rbc.org/utmost/index.php):

When it comes to taking the initiative against drudgery, we have to take the first step as though there were no God. There is no point in waiting for God to help us— He will not. But once we arise, immediately we find He is there. Whenever God gives us His inspiration, suddenly taking the initiative becomes a moral issue— a matter of obedience. Then we must act to be obedient and not continue to lie down doing nothing.

I am convicted of willingly wallowing in the uncertainty. Of forgetting what I know to be true: “If I [Jesus], your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet [acted as your servant], you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them” (John 13.14-17).

Often I am afraid my life won’t work out the way I want it to, or I’ll be stuck in the uncertainty indefinitely. I forget how clearly God has led me in the past, right when I've needed it. When I forget like this and start to wallow, I resent God, my circumstances, and the people around me for not making my life clearer. I get so bogged down in the unknown I don't want to move forward until I know what the outcome will be.

But then I remember: I do know something and I don't have to know everything. I don't have to wait for God - or anyone else for that matter - to tell me what to do with my life, I just have to live it. I’m tired, feeling burned out and sorry for myself, but I refuse to be wallow any longer, no matter how unglorified or uncomfortable my life feels at the moment. "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" (Mark 8.34-36).