In All Reality

I’m going to do something that is very uncharacteristic of me: I’m going to bare my personal life to the world at large (at least briefly).  I really feel that my conscience commands me in this case to share a little bit.  You see, I’ve been witness to a miracle.

There was this guy.  He grew up, had the typical childhood (whatever that is), had all the growing pains, the struggle with being “cool”, trying to be popular, and all the other crap that seems to accompany life before college (or post-high school).  While formative, this period of his life was relatively unimportant.  There was more to it coming.  He could feel it.  This fellow had a great desire.  A desire to be someone.  To be important.  To be worth something…and absolutely no idea how any of that would happen or, truthfully, really what he wanted in those desires.

He wanted to love.  Not just the kind where two people really like each other and the time they share.  He wanted something more, that kind of mushy, unrealistic, fairytale love that you only see in the movies and know isn’t real.  This guy was a romantic…painfully so.  He found the first girl who seemed to take an interest in hi and went full speed ahead, only to have in fail spectacularly after a great investment of time.  He’d taken a shot at love, found he was severaly lacking in it by his own account and by the account of his significant other, and filed that away as a portion of his dreams that wouldn’t be fulfilled.

This guy really wanted to create.  There was a burning in his soul that drove him to build, to design, to study, and to obsess (not to put too fine a point on it).  But the Real World came knocking in the form of that cursed timesink, “Education.”  Art was too preachy, Design was too trendy, Media was too uninformative, and everything else was bland beyond all desire.  And so this fellow ended his Education, with high honors, fancy titles, and his very being still craving the skills to allow him to be creative in a business-centric world.  He filed this away also, hoping perhaps that some day he could power that raw creative spark.

This man, as he had unfortunately realized he had become, now just wanted to work.  To move forward with his life, and begin the rat race of existence: toiling endless days for money to spend on things that might make him happy.  He held out hope that his job would provide him an outlet for his creativity, to allow him to live his dream of supporting himself with his passions.  But this was also, not to be.  Be sheer dint of circumstance, he found himself to have been born in a region almost entirely devoid of professionals of the creative variety.  His first job devolved into tiresome days filled with backward managerial thinking and feeling frustratingly useless.  In time, he moved to another job, hoping that it would allow him the opportunity to improve his skills and perform his craft.  This, too, ended poorly, the company folding entirely after giving him the boot.

And so this man was left, his spirit broken, feeling helpless and alone in a reality that had done its best to subdue his dreams and desires.  He restled with himself, not knowing if he was more angry at the world for preventing him, or at himself for failing to enable his own future.

You’ve probably guessed by now that I’m writing about myself, and I must say that I have thus far enjoyed this first-person cum third-person narrative.  Theatrics asside, all I’ve ever wanted to do was live my life with a person that I’m ridiculously happy to be with, to play and create for a living, and take everything else as it comes.  And life throughout college and past had more or less robbed me of any hope of that.

And here’s the miracle.  God, in His infinite wisdom (and for once I’m not being sarcastic), has led me through these last 24 years over ground that has felt very rocky.  And then one day it happened: I met the person I’m going to spend my life with.  The details of it are unimportant (at least to you, Reader), but she has been everything I ever wanted, and many things I never knew I needed.  She has made the professional struggle I have endured worth it, and has never once been a source of discouragement or stress.  Not even in the slightest.

After the layoff I experienced, I floundered.  And then I was provided with a wealth of freelance work.  I am reminded of mana from heaven, because it has certainly felt that way.  Through no real action of my own, I have found myself busy beyond reason, using my creative skills in web design and development to support myself and (most importantly) find happiness in my work.

So all that being said, I just wanted to declare to the world at large that miracles do happen.  The Lord provides.  God is good.

A few last things that were sent to me by my grandmother that are worth reading:

• Don’t worry about  anything instead pray about everything; tell God your needs, and don’t forget to thank him for his  answers.   If you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far  more wonderful than the human mind  can understand.  His peace will keep your thoughts and your hearts quiet and at rest.  Philp. 4:6-7
• Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.  Romans 12:12

Merry Christmas.