I struggle with envy!  I envy the accomplishments of others.  I envy people who do things they enjoy.  I envy people who do things that, in my eyes, are amazing.

I struggle with pride to a degree.  Not in some big machismo way, but in deep-seeded ways.  Like this week for instance, I was assigned a song and it’s too high for me.  I can sing almost anything, but the fact that I can’t sing this one song is just eating my lunch today!  I won’t let on to anyone in the band.  I’ll just blow it off like it’s not a big deal, but deep down it kind of hurts my feelings that in the one thing I’m pretty good at, I have a limit.
  
I struggle with lust.  I struggled with varying degrees of porn addiction for the better part of 20 years.  That about says it all!  I was checked out during a lot of it.  But don’t tell anyone…

I struggle with who I am.  To myself and to others. I wrestle with what I “do” defining me.  It was why I didn’t like to tell people in school that I had driven trucks.

I struggle with not owning a home. Not having kids.  Like that’s what I’m supposed to have done by now.

I experience life through humor, pain, worship & longing more than anything else.  At one time I experienced it through anger most of all.  Not as much now!

But I do experience where I am.  I experience moments!  I walk out of a movie and, having been completely immersed, I feel it for a couple of hours afterward.  I ultimately broke it off with Karen because I wanted to feel something remotely like what Jack and Rose had.  I was messed up for two weeks after I read that Dumbledore died.

I don’t see how those things aren’t connected with thinking though.  I reflect on most of what I go through.  If it’s something that didn’t evoke a feeling it usually gets passed over.  When I experience something that evokes feeling I put it through the mental grinder.  I definitely don’t run from pain, but process it, try to understand it and more often than not, try to express it in some way.

When I talk to someone and tell them I’m struggling or I’m hurting, they hear it and want to empathize.  But, if I can express it in a richer way that evokes a memory in them of a time when they felt that same thing, they empathize on a much deeper level.

The same applies for me.  When I talk to our friend about struggles in marriage, I recall situations and how I handled them.  That’s useful, but I don’t want to read like an instructional manual.  When I see something, hear something or read something I wrote from that time it makes me feel certain parts of it all over again.  Makes me sick, but simultaneously doesn’t allow me to forget.  So when I recall situations, I can not only help them, but also relate to them.

To say that you “don’t think, you act” is a statement that I personally know doesn’t hold up.  You are an extreme thinker.  But it may explain why you don’t like jazz.

May not have answered a single question you asked!     
  

Pain is the experience. Like biting your nails too close and feeling the burn days later as they grow back. But, those experience make you human. Running from pain prevents you from experiencing some of the lessons God may have for you.

But, I don’t want the pain associated with my sin. I don’t want to experience death, but I am not really a fighter either. We all get a ticket home, what is mine I wonder? Or will I just fall asleep and wake up in Jesus’ arms?

What do you think Keith? Where are you in terms of life and experience. Do you yell out when that latest bill comes in or your wife buys “another” $10 dollar shirt not understanding why she can’t live as if money doesn’t grow on trees? Where are your priorities, the things that you wrestle with.

Are you consumed with pride or envy? Do you sit at the feet of Jesus or in the concert of sinners? Oh, how life would be so much easier if we didn’t have to live it here but in heaven.

What are your thoughts?

So, JPD, you commented on me feeling more creative when I’m down and the idea of art and pain here. I would assume you have a thought on this. Let me hear it!

Maybe you meant, great art comes out after a great rain! …