How I feel

[This is part of an email I sent to a professor tonight...]


I am not sure how to make heads-or-tails of what all is going on in life for me right now, but I am at a point where I feel rather powerless in the face of increasing schoolwork and other stressors. My emotions seem to have been on the fritz as of late and I have not dealt with them well. Spiritually, I feel shot. I have few other words to use. I am beat. My heart and my body and my emotions and my desires and my everything are in deep need of God's touch and restoration. I am not sure how reliable my emotions are right now, especially because I realize that the flu took a lot out of me and I am probably still physically recovering. But I am quite convinced that there is significant stock to be placed in what I've said.

As far as the assignments go, I don't want to let you or my classmates down. It bugs me that I feel like I'm giving up - I don't want to be defeated. But I think I am defeated right now. I need to get adequate sleep tonight and I think I need to take a moment and look at where I am - to look at what is truly important and to allow that to inform my priorities. I think - perhaps I am wrong - that at this moment, these matters of the heart are very important. I am tired.

I am truly not seeking leniency grading-wise. This email is sent partly to ensure that you understand that I mean no disrespect by these incomplete assignments. This email is also admittedly self-serving in that I wish to "save face." But I'm tired of saving face, too... so really, finally, I desire your thoughts and prayer as (I hope) God works with me through this time.

And that's what it comes down to, in a lot of ways. I'm tired and frustrated. With a whole lot of things, in a whole lot of ways. I desperately need to encounter God and for him to give rest to my restless soul, and for his love to overcome my irrational "desire" ("fear" is probably a more accurate term) to run to everyone and everything but him.

[Have you ever heard the song "Jealous Kind" by Jars of Clay? Here's two lines: "I'd rather feel the pain all too familiar / Than be broken by a lover I don't understand"]

Quotes

"The widespread postmodernist attitude that, since there are so many religions with a claim to truth, no one religion matters in the end, thus allowing us to ransack religions to suit our personal tastes, merely strengthens the status quo by driving religion from the public sphere into the private, with the weakening of religion going side by side with the growth of state power." (Lamin Sanneh)

"The most dangerous enemy today is no longer the dark forces of totalitarianism, the various hostile and plotting mafias, but our own bad qualities. My presidential program is, therefore, to bring spirituality, moral responsibility, humaneness, and humility into politics and, in that respect, to make clear that there is something higher above us, that our deeds do not disappear into the black hole of time but are recorded somewhere and judged, that we have neither the right nor a reason to think we understand everything and that we can do everything." (Václav Havel)