A working human being

For a very long time I have been obsessed with his idea that I would only find purpose in my own life as long as I was seen as useful by society. That's part of the reason why I felt so bad during my gap year, sitting home alone wasn't giving me that feeling of satisfaction I was looking for. On the other hand I'm not that typical hard working person. I know enough people who invest their everything in one or more parts of their life up to the point that I sincerely have to worry about them and stuff like their sleeping schedules. I've always been a bit on the lazy things when it comes to getting things done and I'm rocking whatever task, as long as I do it last minute.

I'm a responsible human and sometimes when things do not work out as planned I take the blame even though I shouldn't. When I'm upset over something I'll consider what the other people involved feel and I force myself not to be upset because on some level I can always relate to their pain. I simply force myself to be understanding, loving and caring, to a point where I can't handle it anymore, because I forget the most important person in my life, the one I’m supposed to look after the most.

I forget that most of my emotions are real, valuable, and that pain demands to be felt. I tend to oversee the fact that I value other people’s feelings, so why not mine? There is no need for getting past a problem before it is fully solved. Why fight the symptoms when I'm supposed to get to the cause first, to prevent further problems to arise. I hardly ever take medication, and it's even rarer that I take a tablet just because I'm having some sort of pain. I either now the source of it or I'll suffer through it without chemical help. 

There is this quote that I have told myself over and over again which says life is not about existing, or functioning, but about living. So just to be a working human being, a useful part of society isn't what my life should be about, still I always find myself forgetting that in moments of leisure and I decide to call myself lazy instead of taking that time off for myself. We are not robots, nor puppets, programmed to act a certain way, each individual is unique and reacts different.

I'm a full bag of emotions and when I decided to ignore that several years back, because I wanted to get out of my comfort zone, they found a way to make me aware of it in new ways. All of a sudden, no previous warnings, I would get those awful waves of dizziness and terrible nauseas. I would not even comprehend the situation, why exactly, but after a while it was gone again. It took several month of this before it turned worse and I threw up on a regular basis, which caused me to eat less because I couldn't keep it down anymore, which caused more nausea as my body was aching for food that I wasn't able to eat due to raging nausea. Beautiful vicious circle. That started four years ago and it took me two years to get past it.

It's actually quite horrifying to have a body that feels like it can just stop working on you at any given time. I used to hate myself for what I looked like, then I worked on that because when you are as easily attacked as I am you don't need yourself pushing you down all the time. I even found a strange kind of optimism again that I was capable of fighting through it, which is probably gone by now, starved to death.

Now it's back since three months and I absolutely cannot fathom going through this once more, especially if I see how long it took me to get better. The worst part is I can't do anything anymore, at least that's how I feel. Last time I took some month off where I would still go to school, but apart from that I was merely looking for inner peace. Due to that I didn't go to a camp and I missed out on other fun activities out of sheer fear to be stressed out. Missing things you would’ve actually very much liked to do with people you very much love to spend time with is absolutely stupid. I felt so bad after such a day of being in, missing potentially making some beautiful memories with my friends, that it just added to my misery.

Today we have such a crap day once more. The guys from my youth group are organizing a LAN party (Pc-gaming) and I have literally been looking forward to it for weeks, if not months. I have practiced playing one of the games but this week my body decided to put me at my lowest again. It's currently almost 8:00 am; I've been awake since 5:30 with the highest possible amount of having slept two hours, probably less. My stomach is killing me so much that I can't imagine eating a lot today, which won't help myself tomorrow either. I wouldn't come far if I left the house and honestly, I feel too gross and low to be with them. I'm so frustrated and disappointed in myself that at six in the morning I started sending out prayer requests to some of my closest friends. Of course it's not about the party alone, it's about how I hate living my life so low profile that I don't get worked up, that's not a life worth living for. Besides, being excited for something causes a certain amount of stress and oh well, I don't like the idea of not looking forward to things anymore just so that I don't have to worry to be able to attend, that's stupid.

What am I supposed to do? Quit my responsibilities at youth group, stop working at the library, stay away from church, or quit university? (Jup more than half of my life is church, ok?) I don't have many things that I can cut down with and I don't consider doing it anyway, I refuse to give in. The pain of missing out would be worse than that.

On the other hand I need to get myself together once more. In a week's time I'll be in Mallorca again, and I assume that it will be exciting and exhausting, just like last year. With only a quarter of my energy level there is a high chance of me not being able to enjoy anything, and that sucks so bad I could cry. I feel like I'm in this hole in the ground and there is no other way out so I have to jump up to get to its edges and then use my strength to pull myself out. That sounds impossible to me. I have to think about that first, contemplating whether or not I'm able to face my demons once again and fight through. In the end I won't have any other possibilities, as just dropping dead doesn't seem to be an option. Besides, the first thing I'm doing now is trying to feel happy, because a good attitude fights those demons off like nothing else. Optimism, come back to me, I need you!

Yes I'm rambling, about a teeny tiny thing in comparison to other things happening in the world right now. Complaining is good though, it frees the spirit. I needed to be an egoist today and I might need to keep that up for a little longer, because I'm so bad at suffering in silence. Now at almost 10:00 I feel already a little better. I’ve talked with my brother about coping strategies because we suffer from the same problem occasionally, and as I decided against heading in to work today because it would've made everything worse, I might be able to change this day from horrible to ok, which would be amazing.

Thanks for reading through this if you did. I can hate on female stereotypes as much as I want, nothing helps myself like letting my worries out!

Hope you have a lovely day

Cheerio.

Why I am sometimes weirded out

So here is the second part of the things that have happened this weekend. It’s the more personal perspective, it contains of the whole Sunday because i found it quite hard to figure out what to keep and what to toss because the whole day was just a whole story. I have to admit though that two days after writing the whole thing I’m not sure what kind of light I’m going to shine on myself now, but I promised to post it so here you go. 

I just saw it again on Sunday how God takes my personal feelings into his hand and how he knows the way to make me feel blessed and happy. In the morning at the end of the service the US team initiated something called a fire tunnel. Essentially it means that some people experienced in praying stand in two rows, facing each other, that's the tunnel. One by one the receiving people walk through that tunnel and they get prayed for, whilst they do that, some people prayers might lay their hands on shoulders, bellies or heads, one reason for that might be that physical connection helps them. Now we don't talk about calm prayers here, as that's where the fire part comes in. Touched by the Holy Spirit both, the prayers and the recipient can feel different level of that presence. The scale varies from nothing, to heat, to heavy shaking up to just passing out or screaming. All of these things are normal.

Now I have two problems with this. As I said, I try to be reasonable and controlled and I know that's not the goal when going through a fire tunnel. It is very strange to see how different people react. To be honest I still get chills when I see someone being shaken like a maniac. Also I'm not so fund of the touching as it tends to be rather overwhelming for me. Last year I was kind of forced to walk through by a friend. Don't get me wrong, she didn't mean any harm, but I found it hard to deny her when she noticed that I had hadn't been through yet. This year I knew that nothing would bring me to do it, if not myself. It was like cliff jumping all over again, I saw other people doing it, enjoying it and slowly, oh so slowly the desire in me grew. At first it was a silent promise: “Next year.... next year I'm not only going to walk through it, I will stand at the end caring for whoever needs it, I promise that, but this year I might just not do it at all”. So when I realized that the line became shorter and shorter I took the leap of faith. It was ok, not as confusing at last year, but also not as touching. I just walked out in the end.

In the afternoon we got to spend some time with the team though and I then realized what I talked about before. They are people with a serving heart, nothing more, nothing less. By just spending the afternoon with them I got blessed the way I get blessed the most, by just being with them, naturally, chatting and enjoying the sun. It might not seem like much, but for me it was brilliant. There were me and two of my close friends who actually had almost nothing to do with that whole mission trip, still we were in that incredibly small group of seven people of our church who were on that mountain with them. We even got involved when handing out the parting gifts for the Americans (Swiss army knives ;) ) as we were asked to help distribute them and saying something to each person we handed them to. With God you basically never give without receiving back straight away. I don’t know why, but this meant so very much to me.

In the evening I was in quite a bit of a hurry as I wanted to go back to college late at night. At the end of the service there was once again a fire tunnel. This time I had not doubts, I just walked through it. Again it was nothing too spectacular. When I reached the end though I saw that a guy, who is fifteen years old, had joined the praying rows. Without thinking too much I did the same, leaving between doubting to even walk through to being part of it myself, less than twelve hours. Now we are not talking about me suddenly being good at this, but I know two things: Firstly I did not cause any harm. Whether it was allowed for me to do this or not, God was ok with it. I know that. Secondly, for me it was very important. Being on the other side of this tunnel helped me calm down. I remember two people crawling through it. Usually that would’ve scared the living heck out of me but I have never felt so calm, actually I just laughed.

I’m slowly but surely learning to stop over-respecting everything at church, thinking about the right protocol for everything. I just act the way that I feel God is telling me to and that feels oh so healthy. It means less control, but still not absolutely losing me. I was aware of what was happening, I checked my watch every five minutes to not miss my train, but I was there, open, trying to serve at a place where I would’ve never seen me standing at all. Besides, standing in the tunnel was probably a better preparation if God really wants me to fulfil my promise next year and doing the “after care” as I call it ironically. If I misunderstood him or his goals for me are different by then, ok, he probably has his reasons then.

I’m still not sure what I’m going to do with that weekend, where to sort it exactly. I have experienced more that has to do with this kind of supernatural stuff in the past month than I have the rest of my life before. It’s kind of overwhelming and as it’s something completely out of my control also a bit scary. I’m right now taking time to sort this because even now I don’t comprehend why I acted as I did. Looking back it was so not “me” to stand in that row, I’m way to shy or rather insecure for stepping out like this, at least it was stepping out for me. I’m also proud though for not doing my usual running away trick, sneaking out as soon as possible and then pretending like nothing happened. I might becoming more and more who I want to be.

Sorry if this was too much of a diary entry, I just felt like it was what I wanted to write about.

Cheerio.

Hit me baby one more time

I should probably just stop making titles out of pop songs I don't even like, but the other option I had was "from Saul to Paul" which from the perspective of a non-church person sounds either bad or like absolutely nothing. Anyway, here is the thing.

There is this topic that has haunted me for a long time now and whenever it reappears in my head I struggle with it all over. If you dislike everything biblically touched then feel free to skip this paragraph from here on. Otherwise just continue it is actually something more or less relatable. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the biblical story, but there was this bad guy called Saul who wanted to haunt down all the Christians only some years after Jesus had died. He was very successful doing it until one day all of a sudden he had an encounter with Jesus himself and that changed his life forever. Usually this little story and his life are used as a metaphor to cheer up those who consider them self too flawed as that they could ever be used by God.

As a person who lived on this planet for nearly twenty years let me tell you two things. Firstly we are all flawed and broken human beings. We all have scars somewhere, visible or not. Secondly, still some people have it worse than others and I just know where my place is in that scale.

I am a lucky girl. Don't get me wrong, I remember this time a year ago I spent most of my nights crying myself to sleep. You can now either think I'm weak or you understand that the breaking point of everyone is different. As you can see it took me less than a year from the ground up again. My life consists of valleys and peaks and I make sure to enjoy the view from a viewpoint as long as I'm up there. The next little down is probably just around the corner, its shadows reaching for me. I should just be grateful for all the sun that I got during my life, but it's a source of fear instead.


There's this saying "God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers". I mean if you are going through a hard time that sounds perfect, but when you know yourself that you handle things moderately then it's not as pleasant. This saying basically makes me the weakest soldier to ever join the forces. I honestly fear that I will not be taken seriously ever if my life resolves like this. Don't we all look up to those incredibly strong people who have not been taken down by anything?

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not asking for actual bad things to hit me, that'd just be plain stupid, no thanks. I also know what some people around me went through and I am very thankful that I didn't have to deal with it. Sometimes I just fear that due to me being what I call lucky, I do not understand how hard it actually is. Pain forms you, no one can tell me it doesn't. Imagine this piece of clay. It doesn't become a beautiful vase without some serious kneading, right? Humans are the same I think.

The fears get even worse when I think of what I want to do in the future. I might see some pretty terrible things later and I'm not absolutely positive that I can handle them. I've known that for a long time now and I still worry that that's the main reason why I'm not supposed to ever work in the field I plan to. What if I just fail due to my own weakness or because I simply won't be taken serious.

I'm a white girl, coming out of a family whit not too many issues. What do I know about the real world, about things like depression, violence, poverty, world hunger, drug abuse? Nothing. There are some other things I know though. I know that I'm willingly to learn about them. I want to listen, I want to help. I might not be strong yet, but I'll learn it, step by step, fight by fight. 

Sometimes I also feel like not yet awake. I think that there is more to me that I am now and I want to use my full potential. How do I wake up when I feel like I'm asleep all the time? How do I get past that stand-by mode, how do I awake the Paul that lives inside this lazy little Saul?

I think it's about transformation in general, about growing over you, again and again. You don't need to hit rock bottom, but you need to face fears. Everyone needs to fight their own battles, one demon at a time. If my biggest problem is my own laziness then that doesn't mean it's less of a problem than real life depression. Whatever hurts me is something I as a person cannot tolerate anymore. I might not have heroic stories afterwards, but I'll have personal growth and trust me, nothing is worse than standing still for too long.

Cheerio.

P.s. Sorry I'm lame, NaNoWriMo is eating my soul and my time. Which is a bad excuse but yeah .

I messed up a little, so let's give up

As the title says, I just found out that my first commandment wasn't really one; it was just a phrase kind of introducing the commandments. I didn't know that, I thought it belonged to them, but then there would be eleven. Of course now I could just go back and delete that post, but I put some work into it and I'd rather edit in the fact that I misunderstood it, than to delete it completely. 

The thing is I don't see much point in continuing the series proper anyway. I'm bored by it and my brain is filled with ideas for other topics and I kind of go nowhere by writing about those bible texts, as I have little knowledge of them all. I'd much rather not finish the project, though I said I wanted to stay committed towards it.

When I read the next verse, on which I should be commenting today, I decided that it wasn't worth it anymore. 


⁸Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labor and do all your work, ¹⁰ but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. ¹¹ For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (genesis 20, 8-


I don't respect neither the Sabbath (which starts on Friday evening to Saturday evening), nor Sunday. Yes I go to church on Sundays, but I do not rest, I do the stuff I usually do, I enjoy my life, and when I used to go to school I did my homework then, which is work, and thus should not be done on a holy day. That kind of was the final straw. 

I initially made the series for the commandment that said "honor your parents" but I had some fun with the first ones, and the topic is now over. 

Await a post on a different matter in some days, hopefully tomorrow or the day after

Sorry for not being committed, but barely anyone has read those so...

Don't forget the copyright

So here comes the third part of the series, I hope that after finishing this post you will understand what the title has to do with it.

"You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses the name" (Exodus 20:7)

So firstly let’s talk about some Names that God has. There is a whole list, but I’ll pick out some in order not to write too much. For example we have ‚JEHOVAH-ROHI‘ (Psalm 23:1) ‚The Lord my shepherd‘. This name is beautiful because it shows how much God wants to look for us, how much he cares. Like a Sheppard he doesn’t want any of his flock to get lost. A  second one is ‚JEHOVAH-SHAMMAH‘ (Ezekiel 48:35)‚The Lord who is present‘ which says that, unlike Nietzsche said, God isn’t death, but Nietzsche is instead. And last but not least ‚EL-SHADDAI‘(Genesis 17:1,Psalm 91:1) ‚God Almighty‘, which sums ist up pretty well.

But let’s talk about what the verse really means, because this is really bad for me. It means every time I say something like 'oh my god', or 'holy shit' or anything along those lines, I do wrong, and God can hold me responsible for that. The thing is, I'm not really good at holding back such things, they slip out of my mouth without me even realizing what I just said. God wants us to respect him, respect his holy name. I wouldn't shout 'Oh my Carolina' either, would I? To know his name, to say it out loud, is a privilege and we need to honor him with it, which usually is just really hard.

I thought that this was the end, that I couldn't say more about this part when a different thought hit me. What if God not only wants us to keep his name out of some things, like swearing, but wants to be credited on others? Maybe it's not just we should not misuse it, but on the same time use it when it should be used. In the name of the Lord there is so much, a song says there is freedom, love, acceptance... The list could go on forever. Plus God wants to be involved with us. He is the creator of everything, he made you and me. Is it impossible that he wants to hear a thank you from time to time? He had a lot of work in making this earth, so maybe he wants us to acknowledge what he did. Sure, he doesn't need it, but I don't need compliments either, but still you can make me happy with it. As we saw earlier, his name is more than powerful and so we should stop talking about coincidences or even fortune, because in the end it’s about God’s plan, it’s on his purpose. He should be given the credit for it.

Isn't this part of worship, giving honor to the one who deserves it?  I guess so. For a long time worship to me was just singing, or maybe playing an instrument, but there is much more behind that as I found out in a conversation some weeks ago. Maybe I’ll write about ist in another post, but I guess that we now have finished what I had to say about the third commandment.

Cheerio