zombie awakens

whoa.

had to take a little break there i guess. i know that probably sounds weak to those of you that post a thousand blogs and THEN take a break... but hear me out before you grab your pitchforks and torches.

as most of you know, a few weeks ago i was on a miserable sleeping schedule. you know this because i posted blogs about it... and i posted them at 3-5 in the morning. but something else was going on... something more than just a lack of sleep... because i started to realize that i wasn't feeling very happy... not that i was depressed either though... it's almost like i wasn't really truly living... just sort of there, you know? the sleep was the first thing i noticed. before i left for mexico, in one week i had stayed up for 36 hours straight... twice.

i began to feel very much like a zombie.

wandering around my life in slow motion.

people started asking me what was wrong. all the time. which can get pretty annoying. not just because they asked, but more so because i let my guard down. i showed my hand. they could see i wasn't smiling. my disguise was becoming old & tattered... soon and very soon, everyone would see what was underneath. people would see that i'm not this perfect-youth pastor-worship leader-super spiritual-always happy-positive-guy. i was going to let everyone down.

someone recently sent me $200 anonymously in the mail with a note attached that said, "i believe in you."

i felt ashamed.

i felt distant from God.

i mean... i knew He was right there with me... but i had worn my disguise in front of Him too... and i felt liked i had betrayed Him.

so then a couple weeks ago i took off for mexico with our family not-so-small group. many of you read my mother's posts from the airport. about how she was taking it all in. there was a part in there where she let my brother joey read a short story about a boy who gave blood to his sister thinking all the while that he was actually giving his life. a beautiful, moving story. and my brother's eyes became watered over with tears.

i envied him. i wanted so badly to feel what he was feeling. i wanted to cry. but i was tired.

i still wondered if anyone could tell i wasn't there. that in reality, a zombie creature had taken control of my body & i was just going through the motions.

while we were in the dallas airport waiting for our flight, we decided to go explore the gift shops. my parents offered to buy me a book. so i glanced around for a bit and nothing was really jumping out at me. but at the last minute i saw a book, Blue Like Jazz. i had heard about this book a billion times before. everyone said it was amazing and that i NEEDED to read it. and that always made me want to never read it. but for some reason... at that moment in the book store... i wanted it.

i started reading it in the terminal.

and then some more on the plane.

and some more at the hotel.

i couldn't put it down. i was eating it up. there was a part in the book that stood out to me so much. it impacted me in a way that i can't really explain.

"My slot-machine God disintegrated on Christmas Even when I was thirteen. I still think of that night as "the lifting of the haze," and it remains one of the few times I can categorically claim an interaction with God. Though I am half certain these interactions are routine, they simply don't feel as metaphysical as the happenings of that night. It was very simple, but it was one of those profound revelations that only God can induce. What happened was that I realized I was not alone in my own surroundings. I'm not talking about ghosts or angels or anything; I'm talking about other people. As silly as it sounds, I realized, late that night, that other people had feelings and fears and that my interactions with them actually meant something, that I could make them happy or sad in the way that I associated with them. Not only could I make them happy or sad, but I was responsible for the way I interacted with them. I suddenly felt responsible. I was supposed to make them happy. I was not supposed to make them sad. Like I said, it sounds simple, but when you really get it for the first time, it hits hard.
I was shell shocked.
This is how the bomb fell: For my mother that year I had purchased a shabby Christmas gift--a book, the contents of which she would never be interested in. I had had a sum of money with which to buy presents, and the majority of it I used to buy fishing equipment, as Roy and I had started fishing in the creek behind Wal-Mart.
My extended family opens gifts on Christmas Eve, leaving the immediate family to open gifts the next morning, and so in my room that night were wonderful presents--toys, games, candy, and clothes--and as I lay in bed I counted and categorized them in the moonlight, the battery-operated toys of greatest importance, the underwear of no consequence at all.
So in the moonlight I drifted in and out of anxious sleep, and this is when it occurred to me that the gift I had purchased for my mother was bought with the petty change left after I had pleased myself. I realized I had set the happiness of my mother beyond my own material desires.
This was a different sort of guilt from anything I had previously experienced. It was a heavy guilt, not the sort of guilt that I could do anything about. It was a haunting feeling, the sort of sensation you get when you wonder whether you are two people, the other of which does things you can't explain, bad and terrible things.
The guilt was so heavy that I fell out of bed onto my knees and begged, not a slot-machine God, but a living, feeling God, to stop the pain. I crawled out of my room and into the hallway by my mother's door and lay on my elbows and face for an hour or so, going sometimes into sleep, before finally the burden lifted and I was able to return to my room."

this met me exactly where i was at. i finished reading this passage with tears in my eyes and i too felt as though a haze had been lifted. i felt like i had been awakened from my zombie-like state. i began to sleep. a lot. and at normal hours too. i spent time with God. walked with Him on the beach and swam with Him in the pool. i found rest and life.

when we got home my dad was asking me about the trip... how i thought it went.

"it was great. i had an awesome time."

"i think this was really good for you."

and when he said that... he said it with deep knowing. like his son had returned home...