Thoughts on the effects of sin in my life;

In my bid to help Clem with his session tomorrow, I'm gonna reflect on the effects of sin in my life here, since this is the space where my thoughts and words flow the most freely. Funny how this should be the case, in such a public space. But while I'm typing all this down, it doesn't feel public, no; in fact, it feels more private than a pen-and-paper diary, deceptively.

So yes. Sin. I'm constantly in a state of it, hardly ever fully free of it, if at all. Try as I might to stay in a state of sinlessness, I find myself always falling into it inadvertently, in some small or big thought, word or deed. 

Everytime I sin, I break and sully more of that perfect image and likeness that God had made me in at the start. Like a mirror, becoming more and more cracked - finally distorting my reflection into something else other than what it was meant to be.

Whenever I sin, I find myself going through the same process all over again; I never get sick of doing the same thing over and over. At first, I feel guilty - awfully, gnawingly guilty. I always begin by wishing I didn't do whatever it is I did, whether it was a lie I told, someone I gossiped about, or over indulging in my shopping habit when I know I shouldn't. At this point, I'm feeling really bad about the wrongdoing that I found myself doing, so I pray and tell God that I'm sorry for being such a witch. Then, when it hits me that hey, it's done, you can't undo it, I begin to try to forget that I even did it, try to pretend it all away. I stop trying to talk to God in prayer, cos everytime I do, it just reminds me of the gaping sin: coming face to face with the perfection of God WILL remind me of my imperfections and sins. So I turn to other things in life, I try to comfort myself with material things like food, shopping and physical and mental enjoyment (like more and more sleep, and watching more and more movies), all in the effort to make me forget about the guilt I feel at knowing I've done wrong and hence being unable to face God in prayer. When this phase is over (this is usually the longest part of the internal journey), I start to try to be a good person to the people around me, hoping that my efforts and being kind and helpful and good will somehow help reduce the guilt. Of course, this usually doesn't work out and I find myself never able to fully escape from the effects of that one little sin (or that many little sins, if you will have it) in my life. And this is where I find myself crawling back to God in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where the priest is supposed to be the person of Christ - so when he tells me that my sins are forgiven, I truly feel and know that God has forgiven me, and I feel whole again, if only for that little while. The decision to go for Confession is always a long and tough one, but I always come out of it wondering why I didn't go back to God and ask for forgiveness for my sins any earlier.

Sin makes me escape, sin makes me not want to face up to what I've done. It makes me a very split, schizophrenic person, trying every which way to do everything I can do not acknowledge that I need the Divine to repair my human self, that only God who created me knows exactly how to fix me.