Self Doubt and Selfism: The Cheapest Things I Ever Bought

"Does God really care about me?"
"Why has God allowed me to experience loss?"
"I'm pissed off at God for allowing me to experience emotional pain."
"I can't make it through this without failing."
"I don't have what it takes to be a decent human being."
"I feel completely alone and isolated even though there are people all around."
"Why in the hell did God wire me this way?"

Have you ever had any of these thoughts?

If not, then kindly stop reading and move along to another blog that's more appropriate for someone of your enlightened spiritual state.

If so, then please stay and continue reading my lamentational discourse.

The thoughts and questions above are some of those that I have been wrestling with lately.  This has been fairly intense for the past month or so but has become even more intense for the past week.

Guess what?

I'm really tired.

I've been praying.
I've been reading scriptures such as Psalm 139.
I've been trying to listen to wise counsel.
Still, every time I think I have these bastardly thoughts pinned to the ground, they surge back up with renewed strength and pistol-whip me.  Not only do I feel hopeless, but I actually begin to welcome the blunt end of self-doubt.
"HIT ME AGAIN!" my self screams.  "HARDER!"
"I DESERVE EVERY FUCKING BLOW!"

Before you start worrying too much, hear this:  I know that God cares about me...Intellectually.  I know that these thoughts and questions don't reflect the true nature of the loving, merciful and gracious God that I believe in... Intellectually.

Still,  the questions move in.

Still, the thoughts take residence.

Like Echo & The Bunnymen sing,

"I'm on the chopping block
chopping off my stopping thought
Self doubt and selfism
were the cheapest things I ever bought."

I love that line.  So true.

Of course, that doesn't stop me from buying self doubt and selfism over and over and over.

I've been stripped of my belief that miracles happen in the past month.  Oh, I believe that they can happen.  I just don't believe they will happen.  Not in my life.

I'm very disappointed in myself for this.  I want people to believe in miracles.  I want people to look for miracles.  I believe that if you don't look, you can't see them.  You HAVE to LOOK.

Still, I'm not looking right now.  I don't think they're there right now.  I hope that I can somehow begin looking again.  Somehow begin hoping again.  Somehow begin believing in miracles again.

But not today.

At the same time, I hypocritically urge all of you to keep believing in, looking for and recognizing miracles as they happen around you.

I leave you with this video today.  Echo & The Bunnymen:  "The Back of Love"

Here's hoping that I can trade in all of the self doubt and selfism for something worth having.  At this point, that would definitely be a miracle.

Now, go forth and love Fellow Earth Babies.