a pat on the back

I was proud of myself today. I love taking things that are rejected by people, set out as trash, and giving them a new life and purpose. I love fixing things that are being neglected because they are broken, I love giving usefulness. 

In the barn there was a wheel barrow (as a kid I thought it was "wheel barrel") with a flat tire. These kinds of tires are like car tires, they have no tube. The tire seals against the rim. So to fill the tire a seal has to be made.  If a large portion of air is forced into the tire, the air itself will force the tire to seal. All I have is a small bike pump.  So I tied a string around the tire and put blocks of wood to squeeze the tire. It worked. Squeezing the tire was enough to make a seal. The wheel barrow has been rescued.

A View of Depression?

I am not sure that depression is exactly what I experience but I wanted to make an attempt at communicating what I do experience.

It seems to me that this trial that I am experiencing is maybe the hardest trial. If I had experienced something like a great job loss or another tragic event, I could rejoice in the Lord due to my relationship, experience, and foundation in him throughout the event. My trial seems to be a loss not in terms of my environment such as my job, car, or family. It seems like a loss of my relationship and experience of the Lord. I am left clinging to the foundation. This might not sound too bad because of my use of the word foundation. What I mean is that what I have is logical, and intellectual ties to the truths of the Lord. My experience has come to counter these ties (truths). I seek to think of good things, or to take it to the Lord in prayer, my experience is worry, fear, anxiety without material cause and without warning. I try to seek relationship thorough prayer but my emotions and body makes me wholly unable to see the validity in any activity, including prayer. I am left as I said before, clinging to the intellectual truth (which suddenly seems very impotent) that prayer is valuable. It seems that one type of trial is when something tragic happens and “all is well with my soul” because the Lord is unmistakably present. And my type of trial is that nothing tragic has happened but it feels like the Lord is no where to be found. 

To be accurate the tragedy of my trial seems to be the haphazard condition of my emotions. Another troubling aspect is that I find myself constantly fearing a usual trial, that is the external trials given above. The thought is that because I can’t handle the non-trial, I will have no hope in the trial. I have always believed that I had nothing to fear because no matter what happened the Lord was with me, helping me. I know this intellectually but I have a strong worry that it will feel like he isn’t there, like it seems now.