Holiday Hell

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed. His compassions never fail. They are new every morning.
Lamentations 3:19-23

So, I became a Christian in Sept 2004 and in the year that has followed, my life has become truly joy-filled for the first time ever. But as the circle of life spins round and round, my emotional state has similarily looped in the last few months. I have found myself, once again, in Holiday Hell - my traditional period of mourning and mental self-torture that brings forth fixations on such annual favorites as: "I will never marry", "I will never have kids", "I will never have a good job", "I will never pay of my student loans" and "I will never lose enough weight to wear a swimsuit without a coverup". These worries are always there, languidly rolling around in the back of my mind throughout the year, but they become as glaringly obvious as a blinking neon sign when set in the midst of the cozy haze of Christmas lights, the sweetness of couple and baby-filled family reunions.

From sometime around Thanksgiving up until New Years, I have been walking around with this nasty black cloud hanging over my head. Happy couples make me want to vomit. Wedding announcements become kindling for my fireplace. Glowing, pregnant friends make me want to curl up under the covers and eat pastries til I succomb to a sugar coma. Dylan Thomas once said, "Someone is boring me. I think it's me." Well, someone's pessimism is boring me. I think it's mine. I imagine even Jesus is watching my pathetic pity party and rolling his eyes at me, sighing heartily, glancing at God and shaking his head in disgust.

But as Lamentations says, because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed. His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. As I lounge in bed, peeking out from under the covers at the beginning of this new year, these verses infiltrate my fog and cause a renewed sense of hope to spark. I know that this minor holiday-infused depression will be transient; like a Detroit layover on the way to some exotic locale. I know that as the holidays end and the new year circles round, every morning I wake is another new chance for me to begin again, a new chance to live the life that God has planned for me. And I know that this life He has planned is a blessed one.

Rock on.

Happy New Year.