Ironically

Well everyone, in this blog I have repeated some of my ideas that I have used before in poems and sayings, but I think it could be good that I keep coming back to some recurring themes.  That could be how I know that I am onto something important. This particular thing that I want to mention has to do with some of my thoughts about staying alive, and what to think when life becomes a lot about endurance instead of blessings or even service and productivity. I have been truly miserable sometimes with no end in sight, and it made me wonder what the purpose of living is.  I mean why should people be able to take away my Christian martyrdom AND get away with torturing me.  It seems like it should be one or the other.  Like you can't make my life meaningless and purposeless and be allowed to hurt me on purpose.  And yet I have found myself in situations that seem like that.  I have tried to handle those situations by praying more, thinking that maybe my prayers would count for more since I did not feel good, but it is hard to believe that kind of thing when you feel like your life is being wasted.  However, after years of doing what therapists call "Opposite action," where you just keep building a life when you don't feel like it, I have concluded that the very times that most seem like lose-lose situations are actually part of a life that has a bright side on every side.  I have concluded that if I am expected to keep living with unbearable suffering, then my existence must be very important and every second that I spend on earth is crucial. And then the other bright side is that if people, including me, really are allowed to ruin my life, then that must mean that the most important stuff is in heaven, and I can accept extreme losses here with infinite hope. It is kind of a luxury to write about this stuff now that some of my suffering has eased up and I don't have to be using all my might to get through each day, but I think there is a reverse alternative to thinking okay, people are allowed to take away both my temporal happiness and my eternal reward. It's more like all the swindling and adversity can both confirm the once-in-eternity nature of this opportunity to live, and still suggest that there must be some kind of consolation so great that people can take it all and they have taken nothing.