A Muted World

I wish I was the person I know I could be, if only I tried hard enough. I look out on the stillness and snow and wonder what God really thinks of me. When he looks down on me, what goes through his mind? Is he proud, sad, pitying, disappointed? Am I what he wants me to be? I'm all too sure the answer is no, and the realization makes my heart ache. But an even deeper ache comes from knowing I am not willing or able to come up with enough determination and energy to do better, at least not now. Sometimes my only prayer of an entire day is, "Jesus, help me," and then my brain closes in on itself again. More often my prayer is just, "Thank you," before my head hits the pillow; thank you that I survived another day, that I got up and did what was required, if only just barely, and then went back to bed again.

My soul feels like a dry, parched place in which it never rains. It has been so long since I felt God. In fact, I can't remember the last time. Sometimes I imagine his arms holding me, surrounding me from behind, but that is only my imagination. That is something of my own creating. And I blame the lack of his presence on my own failure to seek him enough, which is probably giving myself too much credit.

The stillness all around me feels like a storm in and of itself, just a muted one. I see in my head this picture of thousands and thousands of people yelling and screaming and throwing stones at me, only it's all in slow motion and with no sound. They are trapped behind a fence, their mouths distorted and pushed into the wire, and their arms are heavy, heavy, heavy and their eyes are wild and rolling, and the rocks somehow make it through the wire but never hit me, and the screaming is so obvious yet I can't hear a sound. I see the screams, but the air is utterly still.

I have this very bad feeling that any minute now the great god of my brain will once again unmute the world.