Life in the Rear-view Mirror

The past month could be considered extremely crucial to my life ahead of me. It has been filled with great times of happiness.
There's the zinger. Happiness.
Being happy and being full of joy are two completely different things. Happiness is an emotion, but joy is a state of being. Joy can be sometimes found with happiness, joy doesn't always mean sunshine and smiles. There can be pain, suffering and woe; but in the end joy is a state of completion, which can only be done by being filled with the Spirit. It is a state that God yearns for humanity to be in. A state of grace. However, it is not something that we can achieve, but must be received from God.
What does this have to do with me?
Well, in the past couple months, I first discovered) this idea, and then time and time again I have heard people talk about it as well. It's as if the Big Man Upstairs really wants this message to resonate with me.
With this in mind, I will begin my story of the last month.

End of November- December 2011.
In the last few weeks of November, I traveled to Appalachia to serve the people there. Although to my dismay, I probably only put in a solid 2 hours of service because of the lack of jobs for everyone. There were 100 people to complete jobs that required, at maximum, about 30 people. Overall the trip was a bust. It wasn't until the last day that I was able to squeeze some meaning and englithenment for going on the trip. To quote from my journal:
"Thats all that matters right? Love. That's what pretty much everyone is essentially searching for: (to quote Nat King Cole) To love and be loved in return? If I dream and pray about love, do I not realize that it is right beside me all the time? Because GOD is LOVE. When can I fully grasp this concept, this battle that is tearing me up inside will calm. It's not something I can do in a productive afternoon, but a lifelong journey."

So you get the idea. Coming home, I was so stoked to do this again; to have this moment where the spirit literally guided my hand into what to write. (Because I don't remember ever pondering those ideas, I just started to write and they appeared on the page) I promised myself that I would continue to journal quite often to be enlightened once again.

With the first day of December beginning, I was still inighted with that same fiery passion for God. Before going to Bible study that evening, I got a call that I was supposed to give a devotion. Oh shoot, I thought. I literally had nothing to say, so decided to copy a devotion I had heard on the trip. When it was my time to talk, I began with the original ideas that I had thought up, but all the sudden I began talking about ideas that sounded totally new to me. The Spirit was with me again. Everything seemed so surreal. I was so at peace with life, and so filled with joy that I wanted to run a thousand miles.

Well this feeling didn't last long.

Finals started, and I was mildly stressing over my borderline passing grades. (Why do I always find myself in this postion?) In the end, I narrowly skidded out of the semester with passing grades, and felt exhausted and worn out from the past months of nonstop going. I again started to panic about the whole college situation. The past couple months in AP art have been rough on me, and I was starting to doubt whether art school was a good thing. (It was actually more of a "I'm not good enough to go to a place like that")

And then December, 19th came along.

It was just a normal day. I went to lunch a movie with a friend. It was cloudy. I wore my favorite flannel. The movie I was viewing was made by my favorite director. It was an average day.
Then the voicemail came. "This is Steven from the San Francisco Art Institute. I would like to speak to you to discuss your fall application. Give me a ring and let me know when a good time to talk to you would be."
My heart sank.
SFAI, my first choice college. The school of my dreams.
Judging from the tone of his voice, and the word choice, it sounded as if I was either (a): not accepted or (b): I screwed up my app. The movie was clouded by my silent panic attack, so I quietly slipped out to return his call.

12.19.2011 at 4:44.... I became a student at SFAI. It was a moment that would probably set forth the rest of my life. It was excited, or at least I thought I was. When I told my parents, tears rolled down my face and plopped onto the floor. Although my body seemed to react to this outstanding news, mentally I felt numb. I was passive, I was neutral, I was unshaken.

It was quite possibly the strangest state of mind I have ever been in.

The rest of the month ensued in the same fashion.

Christmas was not the highly anticipated day of excitement that I had once know, but just another day in the calendar; One that just rolled past my eyes without a second thought.

My second acceptance to MassArt and the celebration of New Years Eve went in a similar fashion. I felt immune to great waves of excitement, or ultimate feelings happiness. Sure I may smile and seem giddy, but inside I just feel the same, I seem encompass the word "ehh".

Why? Why do I feel like this?

Well the day after Christmas may have answered all my questions. Well I may have lied to say that I retained my desolate state of being after the acceptance to SFAI. I mean I did for the most part, except on the bright and sunny 26th day of December. A friend and I decided to take a drive on the coast. With the windows down and indie folk blasting on the radio, we cruised down PCH looking like we didn't have a care in the world. I remember passing Crystal Cove, looking out onto the glassy water seeing the gold rays of sunshine complimenting the heavenly blue sky, that my friend turned to me and said, "You know God is real when you see something this maginficent". I started laughing and shaking my head in agreement. I had felt it again, I felt emotion. I thought I had felt happiness and excitement. Indeed, in the moment I did. But looking back at that moment, what I felt was joy. That same sense of joy that I had felt journaling or speaking at Bible study, one that gives me goosebumps and makes me shake from the inside out.

I realized that the past month, I did feel emotions. I wasn't numb. I felt happiness time and time again. However, those times of absolute joy, moments of fufilment, overcast my worldly emotions. Being in a state of joy is so incredibly more than fits of happiness, that it has caused me to feel less and less affected by worldly feelings. God is teaching me that earthly things are so incredibly unimportant, they may cloud my mind at times, but in the end they fail to keep me satisfied and I feel empty. I feel like "ehh". It is only in times of joy, that I can feel true happiness.

In the end, these past months, I have been in this state of joy, and it has yielded great results. I have learned and recieved alot. Never in my life have I felt more blessed. However, it is only in reflection that I realize this.

Therefore....

In this next year of 2012, I want to challenge myself to try to detach from seeking after earthly emotions, and to truly live in times of absolute joy. Perhaps if I am a constant state of seeking God, I may truly begin to comprehend the overwhelming sense of joy that He grants me with.

Because, hey, in the end, He's all that really matters.

I hope that makes sense. Well, whatever, it does to me.