There are no specifics. I guess that's what's maddening about my state. "This" doesn't refer to any particular thing, even though the word by its very definition indicates specificity. It's just this place, this place that I'm in career-wise, physically, emotionally, spiritually. Something has to be decided upon. This limbo-ness, that's what I'm talking about. This is what cannot continue.
Career: It really is going to be fine. I can't get away from teaching. It's what I do. But yet, what am I going to do? This now isn't going to be this forever. So what is going to be this forever?
Location: It's family. The closest place to home that will ever exist. But it's just kind of a launch pad. A base that I'll return to now and again. Here now can't be here forever.
Emotional: I'm me. No matter how much I'd wish bits of me away, it's ingrained. My sensitivity. My tears. My overanalysis. My wishful thinking. I realize that these are little me-blocks. But why do I feel so badly about their presence?
Spiritual: Wandering in the wilderness. Conflicted. I love my toddlers. Last Sunday, they were completely consumed with scooping dry macaroni out of containers and pouring it into other ones. They're delighted by simple things. But can I stay in my Sunday School Teacher cocoon forever and think that will make the balloon float?
This thing that I'm in, this insecure existence, it simply cannot continue. Not for too much longer.
2 comments:
Oh, sis, how well I feel I can identify with "this". On every point, practically. Is it a quarter-life crisis we're going through? Is it just the way of life?
I find myself wanting God to show up in greater way than I've seen Him in others' circumstances and historical contexts. Sure, He called Abraham and promised him descendants outnumbering the stars; He led the Israelites out of Egypt; He came to earth as our flesh-and-blood Redeemer. But I need Him to be an intervening God in my life. I don't feel I know how to let Him into "this" mess, but I know that's the only way to redeem the time I have, to make it count for something beyond the here and now.
We crave stability in life, but I don't think this can be found in a particular set of circumstances. I've been looking all my life. And just when I think I've attained the real me, I come to find out, there's this other version of me, maybe several, a shadow of myself. And to see that shadow is to wish to pursue it and to assume its identity along with every other.
I can't become everything I imagine myself to be or live every life I've imagined for myself. I must remind myself of this, and as Thomas a Kempis writes, look past the deceptively pleasurable stimuli surrounding one and focus the whole intent of the mind on right and best goals, looking to Christ with a single eye, whatever the storm that assails.
Are we ever meant to get comfortable with where we are in this life? We're sentient beings, and crave comfort, but we're also spiritual, and our experiences here cultivate our faith in the self-existent One who reveals Himself. It is He who has made us and who nows the number of the hairs on our head.
When the nest becomes too confining and our Parent determines the time has come for us to use our wings, He pushes us over the edge.
Could flying be easy at first? I don't think "this", being taught to fly, feels any more comfortable than being pent up in the nest. Not now, anyway.
But comfort isn't the point in a journey of faith. And our stability must come in looking beyond the all-this of the present, toward Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.
Just some late-night meditations and prayers from a fellow sojourner in the faith,
Rebecca
Rebecca, that was breathtakingly beautiful. You hit the spots my own words fell short of. Thank you and God bless you for this encouragement.
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