So, what to write today? I guess I could catch up with how life has been going these days. Work has me very busy all the time. I had expected to get around 20-25 hours a week since I was told it was only part time, but I have been working 35-44 hours every week since getting the job. Despite the excess of desired hours I continue to maintain a very positive attitude and it is shown almost every day with the many compliments and warm greetings I receive from customers. While I do very much enjoy my job I must admit that it gives me little time or motivation to do much of anything else. The cold weather we have been having has been a factor as well and it has been over 2 weeks since we have had a day above freezing. Needless to say, my heating bill is up there.
I don�t mind the cold so much and I really do enjoy shoveling snow from the driveway, but I would really like to get back up to OhioPyle to take some winter pictures. I have been able to spend some time with a new acquaintance who I met when he started coming in to my work and we have now even begun auditing sessions. I am quite pleased to be counseling to some degree again as I find it to be one of my most rewarding experiences. But most of the time I simply stay indoors by myself and am left with a multitude of thoughts. There is of course a sense of nagging restlessness which I almost always experience, but being �cooped up� makes it all that much more prominent. My mind is incessantly active, striving to find some challenge worthy of it�s notice, but not too abstract as not to be provable by conventional means. Therein lies the problem however. The great mysteries which I commonly contemplate are thus far eluding me as far as means of confirmation. Perhaps an epiphany will come over me in time, but thus far no such luck.
One thing I have been thinking of lately is the possibility of writing and actually completing a book. I have begun one already, but like most things I have little desire to continue that one. The story has already been played out in my mind in great detail, but typing it all up with all the dialogue and details takes so much time and I find it quite tedious. Should I begin another book it will be non fiction, eliminating the need for story telling and dialogue. Not that I have any problem with creativity, but my mind works so much faster than my typing skills allow and frustration always follows. I suppose I would have to begin by creating a general outline, organizing different points of discussion and then once I finish that I would simply elaborate with my own thoughts and references to books and resources on the subject. The subject in this case would be something along the lines of the self-help category or mental well being.
One more thing I wanted to type down is a simple idea that came to me a week or so ago. I was thinking of the main premise of my life as stated early on in this journal. That being my pursuit, acknowledgment and acceptance of Truth. I was reading once again the book of John in the Bible and was contemplating chapter 14 verse 6: Jesus answered, �I am the way and the Truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.� This began the thoughts of how it is that man (even Christians) come to deny Christ. I began thinking that if Jesus is indeed these things he states then every time we deny Truth we deny him. Even if we do it out of the need to avert sorrow or pain we still deny him. For he says earlier on in John 8:32 �Then you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.� Real Truth does not bring pain. It is our inability or unwillingness to accept Truth which brings pain or sorrow. We know in part and understand in part and do not see the whole Truth. We only see through flawed human eyes, emotion and our own selfish desires. And so I strive to look beyond myself for deeper meaning in all things so that I need not deny the life giving Truth of his word.
So to deny Truth is to deny Jesus. I also can understand how denying life is to deny Christ. Taking one�s own life in an act of suicide goes against his plan as well. I think on a spiritual level I knew this even back in the worst days of my earlier life. This I think was one of the reasons I did not kill myself when I sat with the rifle in my mouth back in the mid 80�s. I certainly had no fear of doing it. And I didn�t even feel sorrowful about it. I just knew somewhere within my soul that it was not the answer and would not get me back to the state of being I came to know from my one great journey to the edge of paradise. Even though my intellect has doubts about that whole experience my spirit clings to the hope that it has engendered. That experience is at the heart of my thus far undying faith and though I long so very much to return to that state of being I trust that this life has some importance yet to be discovered. This experience does seem to make me understand on a deeper level some of what Paul says in II Corinthians chapter 12 where he talks about a man who was taken up to the third heaven. I also understand on a personal level when he talks about the thorn he received because of God�s revelations to him to curb him from conceit, and how because of his own weakness, Jesus� power is made perfect. It is a very humbling thing to have had the experiences and understanding that I have had in my life and more than anything I am grateful for his grace.
Well, that ought to do it for now. I just wanted to get a few things down while they were on my mind. I still wish I could find some way to communicate more fully the things I had experienced that day so long ago but language seems so very limited. Perhaps I am not meant to or I am meant to see it as a challenge and continue growing and changing in understanding. I like the thought of the latter better. So in closing, that is what I choose to believe.
