I'm in a cranky mood.

My stomach is nervous and sick. Has been for a few days, can’t keep anything down. My head is a mess. Out of 100, I would rank my current experience of the symptoms of my Major Depressive Disorder a solid 80, 85. Always there, always strong, always buzzing in my ears. I was short with a friend today. I was really very sharply critical of one of his views. And I doubled down on my criticism, resorting to a conversational little side-swipe, a little cheap-shot aimed at him. A little “gotcha.” It was dumb. Like, why? I love him. I’ve always loved him. I love our friendship and I value his wisdom, his input. Yet here I find myself being an ass. We need a donkey emoji.

I don’t want to be a miserable person, and yet, I’m often so miserable. Then I act out of my misery and create even more miserable conditions for myself, and make everyone around me miserable. I don’t want others to feel the effect of my misery. I never want that. If anything, I just want to be left alone, to contend with these problems of mine in deep thought, in meditation, and with reading. Instead I’ve got to clock in and work, like so many others out there, and I’ve got all these responsibilities; so many people are calling me and calling on me and needing me for so many different little things, and I’ve got my duties to my church and I’ve got to pick up the slack with my family, and... I’ve just got things, man. Just things. Just a life of things.

And then you look at the sum of all those things and it doesn’t look like the life of victory-in-Jesus you were promised in Sunday School all those years ago, and you’ve got to come to grips with that while you’re coming to grips with all the rest of it. Losing my grip, more like it. Losing.

I fear I’m letting everyone down. Partly because I’ve let myself down, and I’m a reflection of all of you. I don’t want to let you down--I love you. But today, I let you down. And last night, I posted a blog post that I immediately took down out of total fear, because I was totally afraid that it was the kind of post that’s going to let you all down. I can’t say the things I said, I can’t write the things I wrote, not from my place of misery and contention. Or, at least, I can’t say those things and not expect them to be hurtful to the people that I love. Words having consequences. I’m afraid.

So much ink has been spilled already, on these dark thoughts. Many words wasted. Toxic opinions of myself and others. Mind-state: Fraught. Yikes, yikes, yikes. But here we are. I find, it’s like a law to me, it’s like it governs everything, down to my very bones; it’s inside me trying to get out, that the good I want to do, I don’t do, and all the while I sit here doing the very thing that I hate. Oh, wretched man that I am! Who can deliver me from this fleshy body? Although I want to do what is good and right and true and honorable and pure, the Big Bad is always right there with me. Sometimes, I’m tempted to think it’s all bad. It’s all dark. It’s all wrong. I’m all wrong. It’s like, while I, myself, am a slave to Christ for your sake, in my body I’m still such a slave of sin. So much ink has been spilled, but we haven’t even begun to say it all. We haven’t sung it either; we haven’t begun to etch enough wax to describe this, the human condition.

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do since it was weakened by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering, in order that the law’s requirement would be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

For those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their minds set on the things of the Spirit. Now the mindset of the flesh is death, but the mindset of the Spirit is life and peace. The mindset of the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit to God’s law. Indeed, it is unable to do so. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.

If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through his Spirit who lives in you.