Running the Chase

The Chase

If you were to ask me to write my thoughts on paper and share them months ago, I probably would say it was a joke. The biggest joke to be honest. There’s something about sharing your thoughts and ideas that has always made me feel weak and open to the fact that you can give someone that sort of information and they could have the power to destroy you or nurture you. However, this is not the purpose of this! I started this journey as it has been something I had been wanting to do for so long for I had been someone with so many thoughts and I just needed to get them out. If  at anyway and stage I could relate to someone else out there who may be going through the same then this would only be the beginning of answers I may be searching for.

Hence why I have started “The Chase”. This concept I have thought about and have related it back to me as the title of my journey right now as a young adult going through life, trying to find purpose la de da, you have probably heard many stories such as this before. But this is my story.

The Chase refers to the way in which I am on a soul-searching journey just like everyone else. Trying to find purpose, contentment, joy and ultimate happiness. As a Christian, we are taught that we can find all of these through God. That with Him you will find everything you will ever need and that the ultimate goal is to reach heaven and be in harmony with Him for eternity. However, I know that my relationship with God is not a race, it is merely not a run but a marathon. I guess what I am saying is that I am currently writing from a place where my heart has been completely lost in my thoughts and not in my faith. I have experienced situations that has caused disconnection from God and left my soul hurting in ways I couldn’t even begin to describe to myself.

Everyone experiences pain at some point in their lives and for me I guess you could say that was now. Growing up in an environment where there is constant dependence on your being, where independence is constantly craved and your own opinions and plans are shoved below others, you could definitely say I have reached breaking point.

This has been about something far more than being frustrated and being angry but about losing myself. I guess for me, when you try and impress everyone and look out for everyone before yourself, your soul starts to disintegrate. Pressure starts to eat away at your soul and you start to rate your value by what you give to others. For me, I have been prone to this sickness of negative self-control and a lack of self-love. It would be the biggest lie to say to myself that there is nothing wrong with me, that I have it together all the time because it is completely the opposite. I struggle and I suffer from severe over thinking (self-diagnosed of course), constant anxiety and surrounded by pressures front, left and centre…all to my own doing.

You see, I have grown up with this Christian mentality of good and bad. You do something bad, there will be consequences. You do something good and you will be blessed. I have struggled with this for so long because it has become the centre of my anxieties. I am constantly afraid to make a mistake and to get things wrong which leads me to service.

I crave the happiness of others before my own. I thrive off doing things for other people, not so they give me recognition but because it’s all I have known to be good at. I am currently in a stage in my life where I have no idea what I want to pursue as a career and what interests me except the fact that if I can make people happy, this will bring me my own happiness and contentment.

Sound familiar? Unfortunately, this selfless attitude can also be my biggest weakness.  There a certain boundaries and lines that need to be kept when you give and for me, I make those lines and boundaries disappear because I believe that I can do everything and anything. I believe that I have been blessed so much that I cannot contain it for myself. I wanna share God’s love for me for all he has blessed my life to be and to serve him by serving others.

However by giving so much of myself away, I have lost control. I can’t seem to find the boundaries or to leave them. Therefore it has resulted in me becoming incredibly reliable on my own two feet that I have continually put up walls to shut everyone out. To protect myself from losing that last bit of me left  because I am giving so much of me away already. I already don’t like where I am in life right now studying especially when it is not for me.There are so many emotions around this but now I know no one else can change this and I can’t control what is out of my control. I have come to the realization that I am the only one that can change this around by putting in place some things I need to do.

So here I am, on MY chase. I have always said something was missing. That I could finish school, experience the life of a young adult, find love and give it away yet still feel like something isn’t clicking. I already feel like I know what it is and that I am only hindering myself by trying to do everything on my own. I was hurt by people I would never have thought to hurt me, the ones I try and protect the most and I have turned that hurt into resent, anger and frustration. Therefore I became very enclosed and I  would “zone out”, shut down and clinch onto the pieces of my soul I could find and hold.

This isn’t another story out for pity, but simply a girl who just needs to write, and write to save myself. I want this platform as an outlet that I can let go and regather myself to continue on my chase. My chase to better myself, to chase all the things that I know I can love about myself. My chase to find God more and to be close to Him again like I know I can be. My chase towards my future goals and plans. My chase towards a life that I am constantly dreaming of everyday and desire so much #youknow. But most importantly, this is my story, my journey, my chase. So what’s yours?

The Chase.

7 thoughts on “Running the Chase”

  1. I think it’s wonderful that you are writing and searching. I certainly was in a similar situation at your age. I think the spiritual journey and the journey to find ourselves is important. It sounds like you are looking for someone who shares your faith but if you would like to talk to someone with a humanist perspective I’d be happy to converse. I guess all I would say is don’t think of what you’re going through as necessarily because you’ve lost God but simply because you’re human and this is a shared experience by people across ideologies. Some of what you are going through is even typical to many women who have grown up in a patriarchal society. All I’m saying is you’re not alone. 🙂

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    1. Hey! Thank you so much for your comment, didn’t really think too much of this! But i agree! I think when you just feel lost, and at this the age of exploration etc, it’s natural to feel all these things & I guess I just need a bit of patience. But thank you so much for your insight! Any perspective is food for thought & i greatly appreciate it 🙂

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      1. I guess when I read this I saw a mixture of thoughts. I want to respect your beliefs but I hope you don’t mind if I at times provide some critique of the Christian belief system. That being said there are a lot of differences among Christians and there are some things that I’ve noticed between Christians that are emotionally healthy and ones that are not. I think sometimes it depends on how you approach your faith.

        I guess one of the things that came out as a strong theme of this post was your feelings surrounding how you always do everything for everyone else and not for yourself. I think this could have two possible sources. One, in my experience, this very common among women. Traditionally patriarchal values would say that the role of women is to serve, to be pleasing and pleasant, good hostess, caretakers. Such attitudes tend to dehumanize women as instruments of pleasure instead of individuals with a “self” the same as men. So don’t feel like you are doing anything wrong by wanting to focus on yourself. As I said it’s important. I know that this very often leads to a repression of one’s own emissions and it can erupt later in life in less than emotionally healthy ways.

        The second thing that came to mind as a source for this feeling of losing yourself while always giving to others comes from Christianity. At least more fundamentalist denominations. The idea that we must give up ourselves. That we are born sinners, and that we must be reborn in Jesus Christ as he was resurrected. For me, and please pardon if this is against your beliefs, but the resurrection, while obviously literally was evidence of Jesus’ divinity, symbolically more represents that by sacrificing for others we are raised up. For me that is a noble thing because there are a lot of problems in this world that we do have to try and give up part of ourselves to help the world’s hurts. Now you may say, “Isn’t that the same thing as being reborn?” I would say no, because all it means is that you don’t have to shed yourself away, it just means that giving to others is a way of raising up, healing us, and serving the greater good.

        So then the question is, how do we have the power to be this force of goodness in the world? Well if one believes in Jesus then has to look at when Jesus started speaking publicly, perform miracles, be a force of good? It was when he knew who he was. According to the Christian doctrine, he began his ministry when he knew he was the son of God. While I am not religious myself, the story of Christ speaks to me at a symbolic level and a good one. And if you are a Christian I respect, that but I think there is good cause to believe that this more fundamentalist idea of casting away one’s sinful self to be reborn in Jesus is unhealthy, and that there is value of really knowing one’s self before we can do real good in the world. So again all I’m saying is that I think the journey is very important and you shouldn’t feel like what you’re doing right now isn’t part of building a better relationship with God as you said you want to do.

        In my own spiritual life, I found that more came to me the less I looked. I took time just to read books that interested me. I learned a lot about the brain and why we think and believe the way that we do. A lot of my questions just had to do with how do I even trust my own thinking and perceptions? What values was I raised with, and have I questioned them? Should I question them? A lot of these questions just seemed to be answered by learning about the world. And I also was good to myself. You should always take some time to be good to yourself.

        If you were offended at all regarding the way I talked about Christianity, I do apologize.

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      2. Wow I didn’t really expect such a response so detailed and beyond my years! But I guess what I can reply to you from my understanding and from my walk with Christ is that, you’re right. It’s definitely up to the individual and how they approach their faith.

        It can be hard for Christians to sacrifice and surrender themselves to God i guess so that we can follow his plan for us and not our own but it’s for because I believe that there is a love that we cannot comprehend from God that will provide us withe everything we seek. I guess that’s where the feeling of service for others and even an undermining of the value of women as in this patriarchy dominating society comes from. But there are also other factors that have been unmentioned in this situation to even make such a suggestion that it is based on our Christian belief system and not our own doing.

        However, for me it’s like I know in my faith I will always be made whole. It’s a dependency that is bound by trust and faith and a whole lot of hope that although I am struggling with finding answers, it is through patience and learning that I will get to where I need to!

        Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s an absolute necessity to find yourself and to be able to stand firm in your own beliefs and values. I just believe that you can do so with a greater meaning and a greater purpose for everyone was made unique and with a future and life that God had already planned out for us! The thing about life is that we make choices. God gave us free will to do whatever we want and it’s in that free will where we can fall apart and lose control losing sight of the fact that as broken and as weak as we may seem, God sees us in a whole different way. Stubborn and prideful in our own ways, we will never understand his wholeness plan and will for us if we keep on trusting our own strengths and our own beings.

        None offense taken, I probably didn’t respond to your comment and probably went off topic but thanks so much for sharing your views 🙂

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      3. I just ran across this post from a woman I follow on WP, and thought I would share it with you. It is from the perspective of someone who was raised in a very fundamentalist Christian household, and alludes to that feeling of having to get rid of yourself in order to be fulfilled and some of the distress that feeling can cause. I don’t know if you resonate with any of these thoughts. But I feel a lot of sympathy for the emotional pain she is going through. https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/24176273/posts/1156585818

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