The Rabid Rabbi is on the Loose!

Sometimes you just feel blah.

Like, you know you are, but, like, you can't do anything about it.

Or worse, you try to do something about it, but it ends up making you even more jaded, elongating the season of "blahness" and taking your "downness" further down. Like anxiety becomes anger, and, like, fatigue becomes frustration. And before you, like, know it, you're saying "like" all the time. This is when I know about about to lose it.

The worse part is trying to be a pastor when you're generally "not so hot". I have these mechanisms that kick in that cause me to withdraw from people so that I don't burden them with my "blank stare" or my general "lack of interest". It's not that I will be mean, I just won't be "peppy" and "perky". Pastors are notorious for being perpetually perky dishing out hope like it was going out of style.

I move away from people to get my "poop in a group" so that when I come back to civilization I can contribute to the betterment of society as opposed to piling on some more "bad news". I know this is not good, but it's a trigger. I know some people want to see me "warts and all", but I don't think most know how to relate to me when I'm not the conversationist who soothes and satiates with words of hope mixed with humor...a perfect blend of levity and gravity. Not too much, nor too little..."ah, now that's just right."

When I'm down, I sense people stand there wondering what to say. They are awkward and sheepish and unnerved. Worse still, some (I sense) have this feeling of "Well if you're going down, I don't stand a chance." This really makes it hard to let people in on the "less than light-hearted" side of your inner self. It's like people know you're not perfect, but they don't know how to handle you when you're not at least acting like it. Something like that. That might sound arrogant to say...but I'm just trying to verbalize emotions here, not concern myself with air tight explanations.

I'm not sleeping well. I'm feeling quite irritable.

I feel pressure building inside. It usually ends up resulting in an ordinate anger at the most silly things. Like a hose that you're trying to coil up that has remaining water in it that squirts all over you or ants that are getting into your house from somewhere even though you can't for the life of you figure out where or an air conditioner that won't work on the hottest days of the year leaving you sticking to your bed sheets or that piece of metal that you step on in the garage when you're taking a bag of trash to the garbage can in the dark or the whiny kids in the back seat bellyaching about how hungry they are or the rainwater that gets in your sandals when you're walking across a parking lot leaving your feet feeling mildewy or the stupid matches you left out in the rain when you had your last bonfire or the lack of cell phone coverage that makes you have to walk to the end of your driveway in order not to lose an important call all the while getting bit my mosquitoes on your legs. Yeah...this sort of stuff just starts to send me over the edge.

I get short with people. I get even shorter with my kids. But I get the shortest with my wife. I don't even need to elaborate on that psycho-social formula...you know what I'm talking about. The general public gets the "pulled together, composed" Jason. My kids get the "fightin' to keep from wounding them irreversibly" Jason. And then my wife gets the "edgy, cold unresponsive loser" Jason. The people I love least get the best and the people I love the most get the rest. This is my Ecclesiastes. Meaningless, meaningless all is meaningless. What has happened will happen again...round and round and round it goes...welcome to my cycle of depravity.

But I'll bounce back. It may take some time, but God waits for me to throw my temper tantrum and then smacks me upside the head and says, "Are you finished yet? Let's go, we've got a life to live here. Snap out of it!" And when he says that it makes sense. Cause despite the darkness of my lens today...I've lived long enough to know that "this too shall pass".

Yet for now, I'm not myself. I want to punch something. I want to yell at something. I want to rip something apart. I want to let off some steam. I want to get in a fist fight or something. I'm like a caged beast. Like the band Smashing Pumpkins said, "Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage." Days like this I feel trapped in a cage of my own making. And this caged up feeling leads to a raged up feeling.

Maybe it's just a Male Menstrual Cycle. Maybe it's a mid-life crisis. Maybe it's the occasional Ministry Meltdown Mulligan. I don't know. I feel like a Rabid Rabbi.

Yeah, the Rabid Rabbi is on the loose.

If you're anywhere near me today, you might want to wear some hockey pads. If you're a guy and we're meeting today, wear a cup.

Don't say I didn't warn ya'!!

Ok, now I'm over-dramatizing things...so I'll leave ya before I get even more melodramatic.