disappointment and hope

Ya know, sometimes I just feel like no matter what I do, or what I plan to do, I'm going to disappoint someone. It's kinda like there's always a weight on my shoulders that I can never seem to get rid of. All my life, since I can remember, it's been there. I've never been able to explain it or to totally grasp it's affect on my life. Everytime I accomplish something or someone is proud of me in one part of my life, I'm a huge disappointment and failure in another. It's always been that way, always been there. There are very few times in my life where I can even remember it being minimal. I can probably count them on two hands, or less, if I thought long enough. The 10 days in inner city Houston after my junior year and this summer in St. Paul, MN are probably the only times that it was consistently minimal. Now, I'm by no means blaming anyone for this...no one has a bigger affect on my life than me.
But have you ever felt like one wrong move will shame you for life? Cause your family to disown you? Make people give up on you? Well, most of my life, that's the way I've felt. It's probably what causes me to respond so strongly to guilt driven motivation and the reason I've always struggled with self-esteem and depression.
When I was a young kid, I mean young like 4 or 5, I used to smile all the time. I remember it because I remember the feeling inside. If you look at pictures of me at that age, you can see the inner joy seeping out through a smile. I guess that's true of any real smile. I know I still have those now because I can feel them; feel them when my friends make me roll on the floor, doubled over in joyous pain, when I laugh so hard that I can't breathe and begin to cry. It's just that sometimes....it feels like the joy is only temporary, just covering up the other stuff. And I realize that as I laugh, hoping it's not true, hoping the laughter won't end. But it does. And I go back wondering how I can get back to it because it's left so quickly.


Heaven. I imagine heaven to be continuous joy seeping out of us. Only not through our smiles, but through our voices as we sing praises. Some people are afraid of death. Not me. Even if I am the lowest of all heavenly beings, I'll be in heaven.