I don't want to go through the motions.

Hey y'all!

I'm going to cut the intro and just get into the post, because this is a really serious topic to me and I've wanted to write about it for a long time, but I can never find the right words.

Why is everybody so sad lately? At first I thought it was just me, then I noticed with almost every single person I see. It started out subtle, but now I notice this..this "thing" (I don't know what to call it..) in almost everyone. Or maybe it's just me, and I'm going crazy and through my eyes I see everyone like this. I'm going to choose to ignore the latter one. Anyway, as I was saying, whatever's going on just doesn't feel right. All of us seem to be emotionally drained, physically strained, short-fused, depressed, angry, and tired. Families don’t get along, kids are exhausted, friendships are dull, conversations are dead, and I’m going to just stop there. Don’t get mad at me for overstepping here.. okay, actually, get mad at me if you’d like, I don’t really care, but I’m going to be honest. I’m going to be as honest as I can.

First of all, I’m angry. I’m just angry at humans (again, myself included) and how we live. (Okay, not like specific humans, just the whole human race in general, and how "life" seems to work. That makes sense, right?) Really, I could fill this whole page with examples, but I probably shouldn’t. See, our lives are filled with anxiety and stress, and our struggles are a result.

Nobody even tries anymore. We live our lives, try to manage things the best we can, maybe we even go to church, or maybe get really involved in our church. You teach a small group, you host get-togethers, Christmas parties, and Bible studies, and you even have weekly coffee with that accountability partner. But your soul is heavy, hurting, and empty. There’s nothing left in you, nothing left of you.

Why do we ignore it?
Why do I ignore it?

We’re too busy. Pre-occupied. See, I always forget what’s real and what’s not. I mean, I forget the real reason I’m here. I forget about God, Jesus, salvation, Heaven, commandments, and all that. My life and my problems just seem so huge! Tests, colleges, pressure, friends, drama, relationships, etc. etc. I get into this mindset that that’s all there is! What more is there to this life than this? It is so, so, so hard to stay focused.

It reminds me of this one night when I went downstairs for something and my dad had the Weather Channel on, it was on some show about strange weather and it was talking about floods. It showed these ants, and when the floods came they piled on top of each other in order to save their colony, and they would stay like that for up to weeks at a time. It was a life-or-death situation for them, it was like some kind of Antmageddon. And I realized how, to them, this is everything. In their little ant holes, that’s all there is. What else is there to life? For all they know, this is it. They don’t know that we’re here, with all of our “human” problems. And, how are we any different from the ants? I mean, we don’t pile on top of each other like a raft in order to save our colony because, well, there’s too many people in the world for that. Duh. But there is something bigger above us! Something that we can’t even wrap our minds around, and we don’t even try to do anything about it because 1) we are scared. And 2) We are pre-occupied.

Scared because, well, what if we actually have to get up and do something? What if we have to change? And we're scared because we don't want to stand out. We all want to fit in, right? Nobody wants to embarrass themselves. I don't know about y'all, but I happen to have a terrible fear of embarrassment. But, at the same time, the fear of doing nothing is overwhelming.
And we’re pre-occupied because of life. We don’t have enough time for everything on our schedules, we have too many things going on, we are distracted, and overwhelmed. Our bodies and minds are so overwhelmed, yet our souls are so deeply underwhelmed.

We just go with the flow of life. Like Matthew West's song, "The Motions". This song has always spoke to me. In it, he says "What if I had given everything, instead of going through the motions" and "help me fight through the nothingness of this life". Can you see how this relates to what I'm talking about? I urge you to, at some point, take a quick listen to that song. Just click the title of the song up above and it will take you right there.

To fight this so called "nothingness", we have to really be intentional about it. See, my mama always told me about being intentional. In every life scenario, I needed to be intentional. And in order to inspire life change, we have to be intentional! That means that we stop sitting around waiting for something to happen when we don’t do anything to actually make that thing happen. Like, say you really, really want and need rain, and you know you need to pray about it and make your requests known unto God, but you ignore it and hope for the same results still. Or, it’s like desiring a daily bible study, feeling eager to explore His Word every single day, but never actually sitting down, planning, and coordinating a time to do so, but we still expect the same results (I am so guilty of this one). If we are not intentional, nothing will ever happen! If the ants were not intentional about taking action to survive the floods, they’d all float around and eventually drown! They'd all die because they didn’t care. And because they didn't care, they didn’t do anything. They were unintentional.

In order to embrace change, we have to be willing to take action.

Without any intentional actions, there will be no change.

Life, here on earth, kind of sucks. It has wonderful moments, don’t get me wrong, but you all know what I mean. But we can’t allow ourselves to be content just floating along with it. To escape this dull, emotionless, draining, sad life, we have to acknowledge it and change it. As Christians, we are supposed to be the ones that step up and redirect the path. And we don’t achieve that by sitting around and doing nothing. 

I wish I could have all the answers, and I wish that this was some incredible piece of life-altering advice, but it's not. I wish it didn't sound all convicting and preachy, but it sort of does. This post is probably a jumbled mess of my thoughts, but, hey, at least they’re honest, right?

Thanks for reading along,

Faith