The Psychology of Calvinism

I'm still entrenched in Calvinistic thought, perhaps more now than last time. I'm in the desert at the moment. I'll say more about that shortly. I felt a lot of peace today as I considered the idea that we are all filthy and the fact that anything good happens is a shear act of the Divine (aka God). I found myself surprised at various moments today, such as when the department secretary covered the sign outside of my office door which had a professor's name who no longer uses the office since he moved elsewhere. I was also pleased to see students responding when they did. But I was still disheartened when they didn't respond. Yet that didn't seem to wear me down as much as it has in the past. I've also been thinking a lot about unconditional love, something I could sure use a lot more of. Or so it seems. At the moment I can't comprehend the possibility that a relationship with God could possibly be broken to the point that one had no salvation though one had begun the process of salvation. What a joyful thought that there is absolutely nothing I could do to end the relationship with God. Verses such as Romans 8 (Nothing can separate us from the love of God...) and the promised Holy Spirit which is to serve as a guarantee of the fulness of salvation. What good is a guarantee if God doesn't follow through with it? I recalled what my university and seminary professors said about Calvinism being a logical system and I wondered what might be wrong with that in contrast to those anti-Calvinist scholars who made statements against Calvinism based on preference ("I have never liked Calvinism" or "Since I believe in free will going to a Calvinistic school was never much of an option to me"). I'm still not sure about concepts that God chooses who to save and who not to save but total depravity makes a lot of sense to me. There was a battle that I began against Calvinism in varying degrees (i.e. from 3 points to 4 1/2 points) when I enrolled in a Bible school in the fall of 1996 and I feel like I've been in battle against Calvinism until now. It makes me wonder if my resistance to Calvinism robbed me of the joy I felt when I first started attending that school. And now I find myself wanting to surrender to the God whose perfection makes my greatest deed look like the most filthy of crimes. But to be honest, the thing that makes me resonate the most with Calvinism is that I feel the most wicked in my own heart. Hearing about the optimism of Grace from the Wesleyan perspective sounds ideal but overwhelming to me. I like the Aristotelian philosophy of perfection in terms of actualized potential rather than perfection in the absolute sense. And yet I feel like even in terms of purpose I fall short and that I might as well aim for absolute perfection for the result seems to be the same at the end of the day. When I think about my own inadequacies and connect it with Calvinism's total depravity, the thought "Well Duh" comes to mind. That is to say, no wonder I feel so dirty inside because I AM dirty inside! That was all good and well until tonight when I had a fight with my wife over something that seemed so trivial and yet now is such a big mountain that we can hardly talk at 12:12am. I thought I was managing myself very well in struggling to understand a normal Korean conversation between my wife and some students. Of course she knew I was frustrated with myself and wanted to know how she could help me the next time. The way I saw it, I was the one whose works were as filthy rags who had made the mistake or that I had sinned. But she wasn't satisfied with that and as she kept asking me I got more and more frustrated along with her and I once again proved my wickedness by fighting fire with fire. I even tried praying to God to confess my unknown sin at which point she left the apartment for a few hours and just returned. I guess I'll try to resolve the conflict and pray that the Sovereign Lord might somehow intervene in spite of myself.