Good Evening, Moths.
I've been on a rollercoaster of emotions as of late. I could be laughing so much that my cheeks hurt in one moment, and sink into a depressive state retreating to the safety of my bed within a matter of hours. A constant fluctuation between being on top of a mountain, looking out at the world, and sitting at the bottom of the sea, left alone to my thoughts. It's exhausting, really. I know you're all thinking, this sounds very saddening Bri, but as with everything else in life, there is a lesson to be learned from this, and a point to sharing these personal ups and downs.
So, the topic I want to talk about tonight is the idea of the body as a temporary vessel, and how minuscule our time on earth is. This is not to say that what we do doesn't matter and that there's no point to life, so just bare with me and keep an open mind. I recently watched the movie "The Shack" (and by recent I mean just last night). If you've taken anything away from the posts I've written in the past, you can likely gather that I am an empathetic, emotional person. Usually (almost always) there will be a part in a movie that I will cry to, it's inevitable. Whether it be a happy ending, sad ending, and everything in between. What was special about this movie is that I was so invested, that I cried multiple times throughout. What's extra special about it is that the idea behind it is based on someone that lost their faith in God when something terrible happened in their life.
Hold up, you're about to talk about religion??
I will tell you that despite having gone to church almost every Sunday growing up, I am not the most religious person. I don't study the bible or listen to scriptures on the radio in the morning. Because of my ecology background, I heavily learned about evolution growing up and for a while I was hard-headed on the idea of a "higher being" controlling all of life rather than just nature itself. I asked questions (and still ask) such as "why isn't there anything in the bible about dinosaurs" and "how could a person be made using the rib of another??" As I've gotten older, I am a lot more open to the idea of God and wish to understand more. I know, it all seems confusing on where I stand as of now, but all I'm going to say is that I still believe in evolution and natural selection and all of that ecology jazz, but I accept the idea that there is something greater than we can ever imagine that lies beyond the earth.
That brings me to my next point: we as humans aren't even close to being able to comprehend all that God and heaven may be. Just writing this post, I have a hard time finding the right words to convey my thoughts. "The Shack," although a movie, beautifully captures the hesitance of humans to accept that there is a God due to all of the hatred and violence and sin that happens every day. A common phrase skeptics use is "why would God let these bad things happen." I'll be honest, this was something that sat at the back of my mind when I went to church growing up, but the movie does a really beautiful job of reflecting this thought and creating a possible explanation for it. The idea is that everyone is God's children, and He/She loves all of them unconditionally, with no bias or hesitance. God, however, cannot stop bad things from happening. There will always be sin and bad things on earth. But as I mentioned earlier in this post, human life is temporary.
Take for example, the movie. The onset of the skepticism and anger of the main character is that his young daughter was kidnapped and murdered while he was saving his other two kids from drowning in the lake they were camping by. As anyone else would have reacted, he went into a deep depression. How could such a horrible thing happen to this young, beautiful girl? More so, how could God let something like that happen to such an innocent soul. Yes, what happened was terrible, but this little girl, a child of God, will now spend the rest of eternity with God in a place where she will never feel pain, grief, fear, etc., again. A moment of horror will now equate to an eternity of happiness. When looking at it that way, her death isn't something to be mourned. The father will have to wait a little while until he can join her, but by the end he knows that they'll be together again in this eternal life, and the years he'll have to spend without her are nothing compared to the lifetime they'll spend.
Now how does this relate to me and my depression lately? When I stop and take a step back from my life, I realize one of two things: (1) what I'm feeling now won't last forever, and (2) by accepting God I will always be loved, and the short time that I have on earth will be nothing compared to what I have waiting for me after it's come to an end. It's almost a relief once you accept this. Like all of the struggles that I face/will face are so unsubstantial and no matter what failures I face or mistakes I make along the way, I will always be forgiven and loved unconditionally. The vulnerable human body with its sensations like hunger, cold, pain, heart ache, and exhaustion are all--yes I'm going to say it for the millionth time--TEMPORARY. Stop fretting over the little things, because the human lifespan is a blip compared to e t e r n i t y. It's almost the same as when we were babies, how we don't remember a single sensation or memory from it. The times we had to get our first shots or cried for hours for some forsaken reason (sorry mom and dad) were so minute that our brains didn't have the capacity to hold onto any of it. That's how this life will be when we are spending eternity with God. You will make it through this. I will make it through this.
Have a little faith, moths. xoxo
