Forced Content (1)

I've been crawling around my own mind today like a millipede trying to reach the end of a slinky. Every time I feel like i've gotten somewhere it all looks terribly familiar. Progress is impossible to judge; my back legs are just in front of me.
The word "opportunity" keeps dangling around like it's attached by a string to the stick of someone riding me. I'm not even sure what it means anymore. Just that I want to leave my kids a legacy of more than just what I've got right now. And by legacy, let's be honest here, I mean money primarily. It's hard to see right now. I feel like i'm not going anywhere, but that life is streaming by so quickly. The days are so full of blocks of dedicated time, and during the intermissions all I can muster is a bathroom break and a few moments of wondering whetehr a snickerdoodle is actually worth three dollars.
I've got plenty of "opportunity"... screening shirts, investigating the Magic market, bugging Shane for extra work. Writing. And even that short list feels overwhelming, since where will the time come from? I feel certain that a better man would have set himself up in such a way that he would not have these problems. A smarter, harder-working, more reliable, respectible man would have a higher salary, use it to live in a nicer home, and to provide for the beautiful wife that somehow I ended up with instead of him. Of course, the rub of it is that I feel like I should have been that man, with all the talent I've got going for me. I've reached the point where discussions with myself about talent are all in retrospect. Returning to school is completely unrealistic. The clock only runs one direction, and my younger self badly misunderstood the nature of "Real Life". I tend to actively regret all the money I've wasted, but the time is a far worse sting.
When we sin, it is easy to convince ourselves to continue. It's a way of granting ourselves an ugly parody of the freedom that is actually offered by repentance. In the same way, it is terrifyingly easy for me to excuse the wasting of time presently, because of the pathetic foolishness of my past from birth up through yesterday.
God's mercies are new every day. I must ask for them, and accept them, and live in light of them, every day. There is no yesterday in Christ. There is only Opportunity.

Why am I tempted to bear that blessing as if it were a burden?

- J