Hi everyone! I apologize for missing Sunday, I spent more time than I planned on a lonely dirt-road trip down the valley and then spent some time at the gym.
After years of atheism followed by a return to the church, I feel like I experience religion several levels higher. It's as if I just starting reading about history again, for the first time since I was ten. I understood what all the words meant individually, but I didn't have the life experiences and philosophical development necessary to understand the depth behind them.
I'd often ask that age-old question, "If God loves me then why do I get sad?" I never understood that through sadness and depression I learned how to appreciate and create joy. I went through life like a child, not understanding why he had to do chores like brushing his teeth or washing his bedsheets and believing that a "cool" parent would allow him to stay up until midnight every night and eat cake and ice cream for every meal. But through the tragedies, hardships, and suicidal depression in my life I learned how to love it. I learned how to see light in everything, and appreciate people I once found intolerable, as people once found me intolerable - and often still do!
