everything used to be so clear...

Before going off to college, I knew exactly what I wanted out of life. I was going to be a pastor. I was going to shepherd a small flock and advance God's kingdom. And I was going to do this alongside a wonderful wife, with whom I would have children. I expected this all to come to fruition. I believed, "This is what God has called me to." And though these hopes were cemented, they soon chipped away as disappointment after disappointment, trauma followed by trauma, overcame me like tidal waves. My hopes floundered as I was back-stabbed and betrayed, cheated-on and abandoned. I caved into myself and launched into all sorts of escapist techniques: sex, drugs, alcohol. I came to my senses, thank God, but the effects of that have not totally worn off. The cynicism and skepticism still clings to me like a heavy blanket. I've repented and returned to God, but I still carry this burden, a burden which cannot be named or defined but only felt and experienced; and since it cannot be called-out, it cannot be dealt with as it should be. So I find myself now with all these hopes--to advance God's kingdom as a pastor and to be a husband and a father--dispelled by the seeming ridiculousness of it all. Not that advancing God's kingdom or being a husband and a father is ridiculous--just that this life never really lives up to what we think it will, and sooner or later disillusionment will force us to rethink everything. I guess I'm in that rethinking stage, wrestling with the reality of life itself and with the hopes and desires and, what I have perceived to be (but which may not be) the vocation given to me by God. This wrestling is a good place to be, I'm sure of it; and if I were not wrestling, then I would just be complacent. But wrestling is what I am doing, struggling to figure out how it all works together and where I fit into the story. I just hope that a light will break soon and that dawn will creep on the horizon. I'm tired of not knowing what to do, not knowing who to be; I'm tired of being torn between the apparent chasm between Reality & Hope. Everything used to be so clear but now it'd muddled and faded, and I'm left to picking up the pieces and trying to reassemble them into something more solid and sturdy than what I had built before in my naivety and ignorance.