In all honesty, I’m scared. I’m a scared 13-year-old boy trapped inside a 23-year-old man’s body who has been stripped of all joy due to the corruptions of an overly demanding society and what could be considered an unstable mind. In all honesty I’m scared of joy.

What disruptions and changes may joy make to the apathetic lifestyle I’m so used to, yet want to rid of so badly? A broken cycle I’m stuck in yet change to something considered better is what I’m unsure of. Is it my lack of faith or the fact that it will feel like I’m climbing a mountain to adjust to this new joyous lifestyle that all so desperately seek?

Maybe I’m meant to a life of the mundane, but whose really to say besides the Lord Himself, who promises a life to the full. Yet I question this, where has joy been within my 23 years of a sorrowful life?

At the same time, I follow the Lord due to this promise, holding on with a faith that may seem blind to many, but to me my faith stems out of the beauty of suffering and the hope of what is to come from the things that are unseen to the naked eye.

An odd paradox, yet one where I hear the call to “take heart, o beloved son.”