Struggle and the Individual Demon

My dear friends,
The topic which I am about to discuss has taken up a prominent position in my thoughts for a while now, and I've decided that today is the time to share it. It might get a little bit ramble-y, so bear with me.
I want you to keep in mind throughout this post this thought, which is the reason I'm writing it: There is no person in this world who does not struggle in some way. And in fact, it is unlikely that you will ever find a person who struggles only in one way, or yet in ten. I am using myself as an example, only because that is the only example I know from the inside out. If you want just the conclusion (and I won't be offended), skip to the * towards the end.

I have grown up in a position that many people might only wish for-- well-loved, well-educated, and well-provided for. You might think that a person in this position would be hard pressed to find cause for feeling out of place, unloved, or afraid. Yet despite those things, despite all of the care and tenderness of a close and whole family, I have struggled deeply for as long as I can remember. Although there is no one and nothing to blame for it, although I was blessed in my family and always given support and love, I cannot recall a single time in my childhood when I was actually happy. From a very young age I felt very fully my fallenness and my incompleteness. This is a dark and heavy burden for a child, but a burden I think many children bear without feeling they are able to talk about it. I am not saying that I don't have "happy memories", there were times, of course when the burden was farther from my mind or days when it was a little lighter, it does not mean that I am not grateful for my childhood and the family I was born into, in fact I believe that it is because of the struggles he knew I would have that God chose to put me where I am. What it actually means will become clearer as you read farther.
The older I grew, the darker and heaver my shadow got. I constantly measured myself against the images of my siblings and people I knew. The more I worried about it the bigger my failures became. I was too fat, too stupid, too silly, too lazy, too mean, too sensitive. I was a hypochondriac and a liar. I was sinful, a hyppocrite, prideful, and worst of all: useless. These were titles I gave myself. I was not bullied or taunted. I was loved! I was loved and I knew I didn't deserve it, and it tore me apart. So I chose not to believe it. Chidren do think about these things! when I was very little I thought I could out talk it, I would talk to anyone who would or wouldn't listen about anything at all and yet feel always that I was an outsider. I would tell stories about myself that weren't true because I felt they explained the person I found inside me better than the truth. But then I would hate myself for telling them. I would lie awake at night feeling everything that I knew to be bad about myself blacken my insides. God was a far away and very disappointed in me. Jesus died for me and I was wasting his grace.
The physical symptoms, of which I constantly complained, I know now were signs of depression. those dark nights when I lay awake in bed and my body felt like it was freezing regardless of how many hats and blankets I wore (which I simultaneously thought were sure-fire signs I was dying and also thought I was making up so I could feel sorry for myself ), the days I ached all over without cause and thought myself one day a martyr, the next day an imbecile, these were the thumbprint of my personal struggle.
There were a lot of faces to it that I will not bore you with, because they are not the point of this writing.
Throughout my teens and until quite recently I deeply questioned the reality of the God I wanted so badly to believe in and to honor. I tried so hard not to do the things that I felt other adolescents are constantly being looked down on because of, and that, in a sense, was probably the only thing that saved me from serious self-harm. I could not stand to disappoint people and yet I was constantly doing exactly that. I worked hard to try and keep my outside image clean, afraid that someone would see the sinfulness of my heart, afraid that someone would know that I was unsure of my own faith. I began to wonder if the only reason I continued to hold on Christianity was the cowardice to lose the support of my family. Every time I thought or did something I knew to be wrong I would slap my face or verbally abuse myself. I think in someway I felt that since nobody else seemed to be punishing me, I'd better do it myself. I was in a constant state of tearing myself down. College hit and so did the mainstream fascination with mental illness and 'empathy'. I continued to find new ways to feel sorry for myself. It was hip to be sick, either physically or mentally. If you weren't sick, you had it too easy and you weren't allowed to admit that your life could be difficult without a diagnosed illness or some state of minority to your credit. I was surrounded by people who spoke of "empowerment" but lived in ever-growing decay, the less sleep you got, to more anxiety you dealt with, the worse of an eating disorder you have, the more worthy you were. For someone like me this was a treasure-trove of self-diagnosed and instantly accepted reasons for being human. Among these people if you say you are ill, you are a hero. But of course, everyone has it worse than everyone else, and they'll be sure to tell you all about it!
I have been writing in the past tense, but you have to understand that this is a current struggle. In the last year or so I've continued to dwell deeply on the spiritual aspect of this, my demon. Working, and re-working my thoughts, my fears, the things that I think I know. On New Year's day of this year (not because of the day, but because I couldn't take it alone any more) I shared with someone for the first time that I didn't know whether I really did believe in God. That I wanted to believe, but that I didn't know if I honestly did. And sharing the thing that I've been hiding for so long has begun to help me solve it. Of course, the struggle is still very deep. This is the first time that I've told all of this part of my story, and I probably will not be able to press the publish button, but there are other parts that I don't think I shall ever tell because they are for me and God.There are, of course, days when I still cannot quite make myself love me as I know that God does, but the point is that I know he does. The point is that my struggle, and the struggles of the people who are around me, are not made empty by being less obvious or less open than the struggles of those around us.
*We are not more or less strong or weak than each other, we are strong and weak in different ways and while some people may have already learned their strengths and their weaknesses, there may be people who struggle most when they are young and people who struggle most when they are at another age. There are people who will struggle physically, people who will struggle mentally, people who will struggle spiritually. We might struggle with circumstances or with our own hearts. We are each suited to a different struggle or variety of struggles in the same way as we are suited to different colors or a different pare of shoes, some do not bother us but may bother our friend and some bother us a great deal though nobody else would notice. You don't even have to share your struggle with other people! It can be helpful of course, but it will not be helpful unless your soul is ready for it. The only person you must share you struggle with, the only person who can handle it, is God. Maybe right now you don't even believe he exists.
wherever you are with your struggle, whether right now your burden is the heaviest it has ever been, or whether you might call this a time of respite, know that you are not less of a person for it. You are human, and as human you are also fallen, but as one who has fallen you have been given the choice of letting yourself be saved. As C. S. Lewis once said (and I paraphrase):
It is exactly because we have fallen that Christ has given his life to safe us. If we had not been fallen, if we were worthy, there would be no point in the saving.
You are loved, whether you like it or not. You can dwell on your own brokenness, you can let the blackness overwhelm your heart, you can blame yourself for everything wrong in the world and it will not save you. It will not make you a better person. You cannot be made a better human being because there is no such thing. But you can be made free of the weight of knowing it. God's love is not about taking away our humanity, God's love is about loving us through our humanity, about trying as hard as you can to be a better person every moment you're alive and yet knowing that when you fail at it (as you will inevitably do each and every day), there is someone to pick you up. Someone warm your freezing blood in the late nights when you feel your own mortality, someone to sooth the ache in your heart when you remember that you are not worthy.
Your personal demon does not have to be bigger or badder than everybody else's. It might be a little bit of envy, or it might be a mental illness for which you have no choice but to take drugs. The variety of your burdens are covered completely and judged equally. Be loved.