What to do?

What do I do?
I can write these words and feel these emotions. Year after year.
I can paint and journal and cry and hope. Day after day.
But, hidden, lies the problem.
When it emerges, I am confused.
This doubt.
This lack of belief. This prideful, mocking unbelief. The belief that makes me despairing, that makes me cling to flaking dirt of life, to sand that flies in the wind. A complete lack of assurance. No faith. And not even wanting God.

What do I do?
It's even darker than this, but I just don't want to look right now. I can't. My heart is so tired.

What do I do?

It's the artists who make beautiful things, who paint the light streaming through the leaves, who are torn by life. Their hearts and minds become wrecked with dark. They can't make themselves beautiful. And although there is so much beauty without, all is darkness within. All is ugly, and silty and cracked within like a plain, shattered clay pot. There is no light inside. The heart is a cavernous vacuum: one step too close to the edge and you fall, sucked down by the voracious darkness. Hopeless despair, because beauty is just beyond their reach--at the end of their tongue, at the front of their mind, just beyond their fingertips--and yet they can't make themselves beautiful.

What do I do?

I've said that I would do whatever it takes. I would do it. But I don't know what to do.
I want to accept the gift. I want to know the one who created the beauty. "You can receive a gift" (John Piper).
Lord, show me how. Make me beautiful, redeemer God.

Maybe it is this...

{I am dark and cracked, yet I've believed the lie that I am alright. I've believed the lie that I don't need help, that I can handle this on my own. Lord, I oscillate between this feeling and the truth. Here on campus it is so hard, Father. I oscillate between praying intensely and truly doubting that you are even real, much less powerful and a loving savior. I waver on the fact that I need a savior. But how I do. Jesus, my need is so great. But you are the savior. You are God, and I am the creature. You are good, and I am evil. You are wise, and I am dust. Please give me faith, holy spirit.}

I believe, help my unbelief.

In my Introduction to Literature class, we are reading poetry. Finally, something beautiful! Here is something that rings and echos truth in its rhythmic lines!
Or not.
I am doing a report on the poet and writer Dorothy Parker. Here is an example of her razor-sharp, and despair numbed, puns:

Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live
- "Resume"

With her typical irony, this poem was a resume of her life. She attempted suicide three times, when the despair of her life became too much.

This poor professor. He heralds and praises these poor, pitiful people who wrote out of their hopelessness. These people who, like me, have despaired of life. "This living, this living, this living" (Dorothy Parker, Coda). This living can feel so heavy. As I sit here in Cafe Libro, writing this post, studying this biography, watching this beautiful group of people of colored and dimpled and freckled and burdened people, I am struck.
These people, these people, these people have no idea.
These professors, these professors, these professors have no idea. This world has no idea.
Of the hope.
That life is not a purposeless running, moving, spinning on a hamster wheel hoping that you don't fall through the cracks.
That the pain, oh the pain, of a dead heart that beats is seen.
Oh Jesus. Beautiful One.
Savior of cynical, barbed-wire wrapped hearts that spew sharp words because barbs tear sharp.
Thank you for your love.
Your velvet-soft, mammoth strong love.