Woe is me!

God,

I want to write to you, because I know you are here, and because you know me.

Because of both of those reasons I am broken and fearful.  You are God and are everything amazing.  I am a mess, a complete pile o dead twigs, not even a flower budding in my dead vines. I am rarely ever a useful bud or a living shoot.  I am striving and trying to grow but have been getting so confused by your pruning that I often give up or become to lazy to think about how you actually are helping me grow.  I get scared because of my lack of fruitfulness because I am most likely not doing to well in pleasing you.  I want to be your son whom you are pleased to watch and listen to at all times.  I am definitely not someone you are pleased with at all times.  I am a mess, and by mess I mean lost.  I am never remaining in your love, nor obeying you.  I think I am, feel like I am, think people think I am, but really are not.  I am fake.  I am a lie.  I am something like a huge actor, whom people love but is nothing charming off-stage.  I am always telling myself I am remaining in you, or feeling like people think I am, but never really are.  I am very distant.  Very lazy and horribly focused.  I need help staying focused!  

I want to be clean, new, impressive to you, holy, fixed, real, excited that I am in your love.  But I walk out of your love so often.  I get confused, get misguided, lose track, jump off the path, push you out of my mind.  I am disobedient.  I am sorry Lord.  How come you are still here with me?  Even at my darkest moments of anger, bitterness, lies, hatred, doubt, laziness, confusion or fear you are still there with me.  You never leave me.  Although I knew all while in my fit I could hear your voice, I turned my ear away from you though.  Like I am some kid being told to stop playing with his toys and come eat.  You know I need food and deep down I know I do too, but I just want to do what I want to do.  I heard you saying 'come eat', but I said maybe later, I want to pout awhile longer.  I heard, 'you are heir to my fathers inheritance' and I agreed but didn't care to get out of my pitiful fit of disobedience.  I heard, 'but i love you'.  And I stopped in my tracks and listened, turned back and for some reason kept on.  I am not what I feel I should be.  

I hear so often 'you're a wreck, sooner or later you'll be forgotten' and 'you know better, don't listen to your heart "he" doesn't know what's best for you'.  What have I done to myself?  I am a mess within a mess.  I listen to lies and forget how to listen to the truth.  I forget to remain in His love.  Even through all of my fits of anger, fear, confusion, etc. are in the middle of preparing a lesson for youth group.  On John 15 mind you.  O what a fake I am found to be in my lonely front room.  I hate how I am given credit of being solid enough to teach but I myself am seeing how fruitless I really am.  I should have so much fruit, I should be solid.  I shouldn't be getting angry, upset, frustrated and bitter for getting a ticket for an expired plate, or for not getting a job that gives me joy, or for having to pay out the wazoo for car repairs that came out of nowhere.  So often I hear 'WHY ME'.  'What did I do?'  Why am I such a confused, bitter young man.  I'm not even a bitter old man, I'm already bitter and almost 24.  

God, I hate what I know you hate in me.  I want to be better, I need to be what you want me to be.  But I get in the way so much!  I want to be your son, but I'm more like the distant cousin that never comes around.  I'm like the forgot rotting dish in the back of our fridge.  I am so messed up.  I am not right, because I have not remained in you.  At a time when I should be blissfully filled with peace, I am weighted down by my selfishness.  You know Lord, I just read over the last week 1&2 Samuel and 1&2 Kings, Ezra..and I get it so much better now!  How you are the true vine and how "Israel was planted as the vine, entirely true...but became a wild vine, turned to bitterness" Jeremiah 2:21.  And how now you are my King!  How you are now the true vine.  The vine, not just a random shoot, but the vine.  And not just some random story either, you knew what you were talking about! I hate how I forget and get distracted.  Help me to remember to remain in you and to know that you remain in me.  I need to be alright with getting pruned, and getting my feet taken from underneath me.  Without it I won't remember whose hand is always there to pull me back up.  Thanks for remaining in me, because my excuses and failures get the best of me.  I need to own up to my lack of remaining in you and remember you are always near.

Praise you God for sending your son to come for me and to die for my sins, as heavy of a burden as they were and forgave me! 

Woe is me!

ah, there you are, now I feel better.