Did I start speaking Chinese and not realize it...

I was trying to write an email to a couple of friends of mine yesterday, and I retried it today. Actually, if I'm going to be completely honest I've tried writing it 5 times now in the last 6 days. I don't exactly know when it happened but somewhere down the line, I started speaking a language that no one other than myself can understand. I write in this language, and think in this language and as a result I stand alone with this language like a foriegner in a foriegn land. For the first time in my life, I can begin to relate to people who come to america and can't speak the language well. I understand now how so many really smart people are labled incompetant, simply because they don't speak in a way that the masses are willing to listen to.

It is a difficult revelation to find out that you can no longer have an intelligent conversation with anyone because what you think is reasoned, succinct, and understandable, is in all actuality jumbled, convoluted, and overdrawn. My comments are laughable to my friends here and though none of them know they are doing it, they disregard my thoughts on many of the important discussions which proceed from their mouths. It seems the harder I try to make my thoughts fit into the current molds around me the more convoluted they become. Maybe these conversations aren't all that important in the long run, but right now they seem to be pretty important so it hurts to not have a valid input.

Never in my life have I felt dumber than I do now. I read scholarly books and understand what they're saying momentarily then I'm lost again. I'll read and read and have no idea what they're talking about 3 pages later. Mist tries her best to help me out but I don't think she fully understands how compounded this problem has become. There is no one I know who speaks my language or even comes close to understanding what I'm trying to say. I feel like I've got something wrong with me, and instead of getting better, I'm just progressively getting worse and worse. I'm looking at all these situations where I've been misunderstood, misinterpruted, or outright dismissed, and at first it's easy to say, "yeah... for some reason they just don't validate my opinion... they're so closeminded to change" but then at some point, I have to start looking at the common denominator - me. Maybe it's not them that has the problem, but it's me.

It's been a while since I've wanted to become a hermit, but I've got to admit, I'm getting close again. I'm concerned that I've got nothing to offer this world, that I'm 27, in the prime of my life and have nothing of consequence that is useful to this world, or at the very least this country. I'm sure that's not true, I'm sure the Lord will use me to do immeasurably great things, but after so many years of stumbling through life, waiting for that time when He chooses to use me, I've become discouraged, and I long for the time when He sets me apart for Himself to do all that he has created me to do. My only hope now is in the knowledge that he used Gideon to defeat the Midianites against all odds, He sustained David and protected Him from Saul's army, He gave Peter all he needed to lead the fledgling church when Christ left, and He's gotten me this far (though I don't know how).