we’re finding happiness in our own hopeless ways

This is a prayer and realization that I wrote earlier this year. It was in response to a question I had: what is art without God, or created by those without the heart/mindset of Christ? what should be our response and is it okay to find joy in it?

I hope you feel something from this. Let us have compassion.

---

we all have a God-shaped hole in our hearts with the unceasing drive to fill it.

whatever we do in life, it’s because we want to feel whole again.

a lot of us think we can find satisfaction in another person, thinking that other person can fill us. infatuation and a spiritual bond with someone else feel so fricking good, but it wanes because fires always die, but not before leaving both hearts all burned up inside as they search for someone new.

it’s a cycle of never being enough.

some of us chase careers and self-improvement, because maybe the secret is within the self if not in others, but somehow everyone is terrified of dying alone and being alone and they’ll do anything to not be alone.

still others give up on relationships and enlightenment because they are impatient and want that high now, taking drugs and risky hook-ups and cheap thrills, but it always wears off and they’re left lying cold in their bed with reality crashing back down on them like a pile of bricks, and they get up bruised and broken and do it again, till there’s nothing left.

somehow it’s never enough. it’s never fricking enough.

so God, when I read a piece of fiction or listen to a song that just guts me and hits me with a confusing jumble of emotions that make me feel so human and so empty and so content and so unhappy and happy all at once, I realize that the person who wrote it is just like me and just like me has a God-sized hole in their heart and I realize You are kind enough to make them feel what it’s like to have You for a moment. but I’m lucky, I’m so ridiculously lucky, to have You with me at all times, every time, forever and ever.

thank you for loving me even when I don’t deserve it, even when I buy into the world’s lies that a person or a choice in the world can fill that hole in my heart. You are so perfect and I am so tragically flawed, You are so sure and I am tragically lost, You are so beautiful and I am a mess of sin, but You complete me, You find me, You renew me, and I don’t deserve a bit of it but I’m as grateful as I can be right now, to be Your daughter.

I feel so weak (and I hate that) knowing I can’t be more for You. but it’s enough to exist as Yours. I know that my happiness is hopeful and that fills me simultaneously with joy to be at this point in my life and sadness because I wish everyone else in the world could have this too.

God, please make me more grateful, please make me run to You, please make me full of worship, please make me want You, please make me never leave You.

I’m so sorry I can’t believe in You to the extent I should, I’m so sorry I keep running and keep falling, I’m so sorry I can’t love You more;

help my unbelief.