I didn't intend for this blog to be a personal record of my emotions, experiences, difficulties and joys. I'm not sure what I did expect it to be. Perhaps I envisioned perfectly objective disscussion of the salient topics of the day, rather like some absurd eighteenth-century essay writer, fresh from a hard afternoon at the chocolate house debating the relative merits of the Social Contract and the importance of getting your servants to make you really good quality French Coffee. I don't know.
I also don't know how I could expect something that I had written not to have the image, impression, likeness and even, dare I say, the very smell of me all over it. How could I separate myself from my opinions, my ideas, disown them and discount them as if not my own?
The reality is, this is a personal thing, because I'm writing it. That doesn't mean that it's a diary, or a record of my social life, but it also doesn't mean that it has to be objective; indeed, how can it be? So I don't want to be hesitant about being honest here, about writing from my point of view, however imperfect or ill-formed or illogical; it's the only one I've got.

I have found the last two weeks a massive struggle, and at the moment it doesn't look like getting any easier.
I am a third-year English student, I greatly enjoy my studies, and have been successful in my first two years of my degree. I am quite heavily involved with my University Christian Union, I am relatively active in terms of kid's work and other student/Sunday meeting stuff at a local church, and I have a job at Whittard in Manchester city centre at weekends. I have a reasonably busy, full life. I wouldn't say I find friendships easy, particularly sustaining them, but I feel that I have great friends who I can trust and feel comfortable with. I have a very loving and supportive family. I have a really good house, with fantastic housemates. I have enough money to live on, and am not worried at the moment about my finances.

And the big shock is, it's not enough.

Why is it such a shock?

It's a shock because I keep waking up, morning after morning, feeling the same, the same sense of sickness. It's a shock because this isn't a position that I thought I'd find myself in, but I keep waking up to a feeling of mild horror that I know exactly what the day is to hold before it has even begun, that I know that this feeling will persist, will continue until the next night, and will begin again promptly the next morning too.

It's a shock because this shouldn't be happening to me.

Why not?

It's a shock because I thought I was fulfilled. Granted, I know there are a lot of issues that I have with personal relationships, (ha ha, 'issues', that catch all term...) but thinking of the postition I was in this time last year, I can't see how I was any better off in that department then. Yet I didn't feel this then. I thought I was fulfilled, not because I was successful (by worldly standards I'm not, particularly) or because I was in a great relationship (I'm not, and I wasn't previously at any point either) or because I was weathly (no, I'm not) but because I am a Christian.

I thought I was fulfilled because I had found salvation in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet looking back, to before I started to feel this emptiness, was that the case? I'm not sure.

I'm not sure if I was gaining fulfillment through my acceptance of Jesus Christ, through my conviction of my weaknesses and sins, and through my faith in God. I'm not sure if I was drawing my comfort and satisfaction, joy and contentment through my faith in Jesus Christ.
Though with my mouth I may say I was, and sincerly mean it, I feel now that it wasn't, and isn't currently the case.
And so now this, this waking every morning to a stupour that is only briefly relived during the course of each day, to another day of the same, the same this, the same that. The same E-Mail inbox, the same breakfast, the same cupboards full of food I am no longer even thanful for, the same Bible, the same phone-calls or text messages, can you make this, can you ask them that, can you be there for 3pm? Of course I can (and why not?), the same purposeful walk down upper brook street, back and forth, back and forth. The same sense of foreboding; what have I forgotten? The same air of menace; will I have enough time? Will I even have time to finish my degree?

Spread too thin? That isn't the half of it.

It's my own fault. I agreed to serve on the CU committee, and agreed, by definition to serve with joy, not resentment. I agreed to help lead a CU smallgroup, and to help out with the Kid's work at church on Sundays, and way back, to be part of a team planning a CU missions week, and to help out and be there and put things away and set the PA up and arrange prayer meetings, and make sure there is a worship band and make sure and make sure and make sure until the point that I don't feel sure about anything any more.

It's burn-out, happens to us all, dear boy. Take two asprin, have a rest for a day or so. Go out with friends, have a break. Take in the sea air, or go for a walk.

It isn't supposed to be like this. But at the same time, it is like this, so I have to deal with it.

Lately I have been prayerless, or when I do pray, it's only for a short time, with no focus. I've been dry spirtually; I feel no passion, no desire, no longing, just a small, dull ache, and it is like an ache in that it isn't in any way a sharp thing, but blunt and cold and exacting. It's a gradual erosion of something, an erosion of love, of care and compassion for people, for those who I see begging outside Tesco on Oxford Road, or for friends and family, who I earnestly want to see come to faith in Jesus Christ. Compassion for friends suffering a rough time, interest in other people. Desire to make a difference truly, and I think I'm justfied in saying this is the truth, for the kingdom of God, desire to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ. All this, all this feels so far from me now, I feel frazzled, worn-down, on the edge of something. It's a kind of 'overfullness' in places, not perhaps an emptiness. I feel over full with facts, both Biblical, (Persians, Greeks and Romans, Hellenisation) and not (New Grub Street written 1891, 1870 Forster act, modernist period indefinable, but probably at its peak in 1920s) over full with the futlility of a life lived for anything other than God. Over full with desires, desires for everything, sex, food, excessive comfort, pleasure, success. But not desire for God. That's the emptiness.