Loving Life While Hating It

Loving Life While Hating It
As I walked from the base store (BX) to my dorm, it was 4 degrees and windy on Dover Air Force Base, and my Texas coat wasn’t enough. Having been dropped off there the day before, with the icy wind burning my face, I had yet to learn just how miserable I’d be in the coming months.
Basic training in San Antonio was miserable, but somehow okay because I knew it was temporary.
Now I was in Delaware. (We used to say, “Dela-where?”).
My girlfriend back home was already cheating on me. Though I wouldn’t learn that for a while, it was evident in the way we were interacting on the phone.
My job was one of the worst in the Air Force, shipping cargo for 12 mind-numbing hours a day, 6 days a week, in the darkest, dirtiest warehouse in the world on a 7pm-7am graveyard shift.
I was lonely because I did not fit in. I called so many people back home in Texas (where I desperately wanted to be) that I ran up a $2000 phone bill (remember long-distance calling?).
My roommate was the porn king of Wisconsin and decorated our room accordingly. And he was dirty. So dirty. Plus, it felt like the Wisconsin accent was the exact opposite of my Texas accent, like the difference between handwriting that slants left versus right. I could never understand him.
And I was stuck. Four years to a 20-year-old seems like a heck of a long time. It’s a fifth of your entire life. That’s how long I’d have to endure this hell.
So miserable. You may think this doesn’t sound that bad, but for me, I truly didn’t know how I’d survive it. I hated life. Hated it so much.
That lasted about six months. Eventually, I found my friends, met and started dating my future wife, and moved to a better job with an 8-hour day shift. I also moved off base and away from the porn king. I only think fondly about the rest of the time.
But man, for a while there, it was dark and sad.
Yesterday, I was blessed to write about being happy.
But what about when you’re not happy?
What about when you actually hate the life you’ve been given?
Job couldn’t have liked anything about his life when he lost everyone and lived in pain.
Job 9:21b says, “I despise my life” (NIV).
Have you ever been there? I have.
And you don’t have to have Job’s terrible circumstances.
When I think about those days in Delaware, I wonder what it would have been like for me if I were a committed Christian.
It would have been different, especially if I had been a wise Christian.
Here’s how:
    1.    I would not have felt nearly as alone. I would have known that God was with me.
    2.    I would have gone to church, and I would have likely made some friends that made my life better.
    3.    I would have gotten some mileage out of the fact that the God who is mysteriously in control always has a purpose for what we’re going through, and He turns all of it toward our good.
    4.    I would have developed goals and plans. I would have saved up money. I would have learned some skills that might be useful in the future. I would have understood myself as an image-bearer of God with purposes to discover and fulfill.
    5.    I might have known about Viktor Frankl and his book Man’s Search for Meaning, where he describes living a life of hope and purpose, even though he was in a Nazi concentration camp.
    6.    I would have focused on love for my neighbor, including my roommate and all the people who I didn’t really fit in with.
    7.    And most importantly, I would have dealt with the idea that life is not about pleasure-seeking.
 
Pleasure Seeking
What I remember about those days is the constant desire to experience glee of some sort. My god was my belly. I spent too much on food and consumer goods I didn’t need. How does a guy who wears a uniform every day need to spend so much on clothes?
I spent a fair amount of time dreaming about luxury goods: mansions, exotic cars, and anything else that goes with the lifestyles of the rich and famous. I cut out pictures of these things in magazines and imagined having them, without ever once thinking about just exactly how I’d get them.
To sum it up: I was miserable, but trying to defeat misery with consumption, with dopamine, with people.
Yeah, people. That can be confusing because we’re wired for relationship and community. We’re wired to want people around us. I still am.
But what was different back then was that, with no internal sense of identity, people were my source of self-esteem. I needed people to like me, and these freaking people didn’t like me.
Why? I don’t know. We were just different. I felt accepted and highly regarded in the college music program I’d dropped out of the year before. Those were my people.
But in Delaware, I wasn’t with artists. I was with NASCAR lovers. Usually the same people don’t like opera and NASCAR. 
 
Ever the chameleon, I picked a driver, Dale Sr., of course, and got into cars. I made some friends, but since I was faking who I was, they weren’t deep friendships. 
I made friends with people I didn’t connect with to fill a void inside.
I made friends and ran up $2000 phone bills to avoid being alone with myself and to have them reflect affirmation back to me as a relief to my misery.
I ate in restaurants every day instead of eating free in the chow hall because buying food that tasted good promised to fill a void (a promise it didn’t deliver).
I bought things as soon as I got money and then I got credit from the BX.
I was “buy now, pay later” guy.
I was instant gratification guy.
And I drank a lot too.
So, this is what the problem was. I lived for these idols, but had very little means to attain them (Thank God!). At least, before, in college, I could get some of those idols and worship them for hits of dopamine and gratification of my appetite in return for that worship.
The answer would have been to not live for idols. I could’ve worshiped Jesus instead, been values-driven, rather than pleasure-driven.
This means I would have thought about why I spent what I spent. I would have spent only money I had, and none that I didn’t have, trying to somewhat enjoy today while not sabotaging the future.
I would have seen my time for what it was, brief, and I would have determined to leave the Air Force stronger financially, relationally, physically, and spiritually. I would have enjoyed the process of being a creator, like my Father in heaven, rather than a consumer like the ruler of this world.
I would have found myself on my bed at night drifting off to, “I’m blessed…thank you, God.”
God had a plan in those days and He was moving in spite of my not knowing Him. Nothing has been wasted.