I thought about Jewel’s song “Hands.” There is a line in it “I won’t be made useless, and be idle with despair.” I asked myself, “Had I become useless? Was I becoming idle with despair?” Sitting around the AmeriHouse complaining definitely did not accomplish anything. I, in fact, had become useless and idle with despair. But if only that were the case… It was really so much worse than that. I had actually made despair into an idle. It had replaced God in my life. I wondered, “What happened to the optimist I use to be?” The old me would have never just sat around complaining about stuff, the old me would have done something. Had given up on God changed me into what I am now?
I thought about when I saw the movie Dogma (1999.) There is a scene, where the two angels are talking and one is telling the other how humans are able to deny God’s existence and can go numb to the pain of not having Him in their lives… a privilege angels do not have. That is a privilege that I realized I did not have either. I had spent the year trying to deny God, but when it came down to it-I still believed.
God gave me a tremendous gift of faith and I could try to deny Him all I wanted, but could not really get away from Him. What I had accomplished in the past year was to get to know many false idles. The ultimate of these encounters was with the god of despair, whom I had really been worshiping all year, but met face to face that day at the AmeriCorps house. I saw how my life had become filled with emptiness, and I did not like what that turned me into. I realize that I needed God in my life. Even if, for no other reason, than with God I am forced to try to see the world the way God sees it. Not focus on the negativity that has happened, but rather all the potential for beauty and greatness there is. So just over a week later, on Christmas Eve of 1999 I made my way to Church and confess a year’s worth of fleeing from God and thus in doing so lost the wager.
