NaNoWriMo

It is nine whole days into National Novel Writing Month, and I haven't started my novel  yet.  I'm missing out on these thirty days of literary abandon!!

I got distracted.

Shoot.

Let that moment come soon...

It seems as if I am standing on one side of a huge canyon and see how I should grow toward you, live in your presence and serve you, but cannot reach the other side of the canyon where you are. I can speak and write...about the beauty and goodness of the life I see on the other side, but how, O Lord, can I get there?

-  Henri Nouwen, A Cry for Mercy

My life is filled with very good things right now.

I have a steady job.  Affordable rent.  A great housemate.  Beautiful mountains and coastline within reach.  Family nearby. Plentiful food.  Easy transportation.  Good health.  Educational opportunities.  Fall colors right outside my window.

Why, then, am I unhappy?  Why do I still feel like I’m lost in the dark?

It seems so foolish: God has spent the last several years showing me more deeply—more beautifully—that He is what matters.  Not people’s expectations, not my own expectations, not the ways I think I should be serving Him, not how spectacular my life looks.  And yet here I am again, so quickly plagued with doubt and insecurity, so afraid that my life means nothing right now.  So afraid that I have missed what God wanted me to do, that I will always feel adrift and vaguely purposeless. 

And when I see the world around me, around those close to me—the deaths of children, cancer, miscarriages, chronic illness, suicide attempts, friends estranged—I am horrified that I, with my lavish blessings, dare to be unhappy, that I dare to be less than bursting with gratefulness at all times.   But it’s a horror that only makes the sadness soak in deeper, and gives fertile ground to hopelessness.  

The worst part is knowing that I have “the answer”.  Many people are healthy and wealthy, and still sense an emptiness.  I mean, that’s what we tell them when we evangelize, right?  “Still trying to fill that void with [money, sex, success, beauty, drugs, other]?  That’s the God-shaped vacuum in you, that He’s just waiting to fill.  Nothing else can fill it.”

So, what, then, when you have health and wealth and Jesus, and still have a void?  What, when you re-read the things you’ve written—those beautiful lessons, those assurances of grace and significance in Christ, those times when God has been here—and doubt they can ever have been your words?

I know—know for certain—that God has not abandoned me.  I believe His promises never to forsake me.  I know that He is my hope, and my hiding place; my glory and the lifter of my head.  He is faithful, and glorious, and worthy of all praise.  I can see it with my eyes, and even recount it with my lips.  But somehow I can’t get that knowledge to matter, in my gut.  I know that we are not promised warm fuzzy “God is present” feelings all the time.  I know that feelings are not everything.  But somehow  “knowing” that that He’s close, that He loves me, that I’m safe in Him—when I feel so exposed and sin-soaked and alone—makes the separation seem that much more profound.

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Thanks, indeed.

I can only keep trying to be faithful, even though I feel faithless most of the time. What else can I do but keep praying to you, even when I feel dark; to keep writing about you, even when I feel numb, to keep speaking in your name, even when I feel alone.

…

I read about "knowing you," about the ways one comes to a knowledge of you, and I pray that what I understand with my mind will descend one day into my heart and give me inner light.

I call to you, O Lord, from my quiet darkness. Show me your mercy and love. Let me see your face, hear your voice, touch the hem of your cloak. I want to love you, be with you, speak to you and simply stand in your presence. But I cannot make it happen. Pressing my eyes against my hands is not praying, and reading about your presence is not living in it.

But there is that moment in which you will come to me, as you did to your fearful disciples, and say "Do not be afraid, it is I". Let that moment come soon, O Lord. And if you want to delay it, then make me patient.  Amen.  - Nouwen

Amen. 

The Merton Prayer

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

- Thomas Merton, from Thoughts in Solitude

Contentment vs. Complacency

Sometimes there is a hard line to walk between contentment and complacency, I think.

As I mentioned a couple posts ago, I was recently offered a job with that organization I applied to last fall, and I declined it.  I'm confident I made the right decision.  The timing just wasn't quite right.

It was an odd decision to make, though, because--once again--I found my life being directed towards, well, nothing that looks like anything "exciting".  It's basically more of the same of what I do now.  So I found myself wondering whether I was choosing to pass up the new job because keeping my current one is just simpler.  And it made me start second-guessing whether all those past things I had interpreted as "closed doors" were actually just my own lack of initiative, my own unwillingness to face the challenges of something new.

As I wrestled with these questions, it became clear to me that the two options--the new job vs. moving back to Oregon--were becoming a secondary dichotomy in my mind: the "responsible" choice (consistency, benefits, room for career growth) vs. the "fun" choice (flexibility, people I already know and love, travel plans).

For, weird as it may seem to some people, including myself some days, I'm really liking my life--job included--right now.  Which is where the fine line between contentment and complacency becomes relevant.  Surely being happy in a job I'm overqualified for, outside my obvious "gifting", with no real opportunity to advance, is a sign I'm settling, right?  I often find I don't give myself full permission to relax and enjoy right now for what it is, because relaxing is too much like giving up.

But recently, I have been considering the difference between "giving up on" and "letting go of", and find the distinction to be monumental.  Releasing my own expectations of how God should use me--complete with its rather over-inflated sense of personal destiny--does not require me to give up my loves or gifts or desires.  It just means I give them back to God, to do with as He will.  And with that release comes an immense freedom to be where I am and love where I am.  I can eagerly expect God to do great things and to bring me to a "better fit" for myself and my gifts while also recognizing that God's idea of "great things" and a "good fit" may be radically different than my own in this moment.  And I can know that that's okay, too, because He's God.  And I'm not.

It's interesting: I had always thought I was making myself available to God because I was willing to travel far and live in difficult conditions and sacrifice many luxuries.  But I’m coming to see that I was still making myself as unavailable as the rich man who says “I’ll follow you if you don’t make me sell my stuff,” or the comfortable guy who says “I’ll follow you if you don’t make me do something dangerous.”  My ultimatum was just nobler in my own eyes: “I’ll follow you if you don’t make me do something boring, or unimportant.

I tell God, “Here I am, send me anywhere!” but squirm as I hear Him say, “Anywhere?  Even where you already are?”  I tell Him, “Here I am, I’ll do anything!” and hear Him say, “Anything?  Even this job that seems so insignificant?  Even these things that look like ‘nothing’ to the world, and to yourself?"

And those questions are hard for me to answer.

Obviously, stretching situations are important, and to be sought.  But, in many ways, this "not doing anything exciting" is stretching for me.  I am having firmly to declare the object of my worship: my own adventurous plans to serve God, or God Himself.  And I think my faith--in Him, in His plans, in His goodness, in His all-sufficiency--is in some ways being tested and grown more through this period of stillness than it would be if the heavens opened and He told me to sell all my possessions and move to Bangladesh tomorrow.

And there is such rest when we release our plans to Him.  Whatever inconsistencies and false motivations and sins clog our decision-making, God in His crazy grace remembers that we are dust and honors our efforts to serve and obey Him.  And we don’t have to have perfect motives for God to use us (or else He never could).  And even if we make the “wrong” choice, God will not abandon us in our foolishness, but will still work it into something beautiful, to His glory.

That's pretty darn fantastic.

Indeed, perhaps the prize of contentment and the risk of complacency are not related in the way I first proposed.  Perhaps the only place to fear complacency is in our pursuit of God, because--when we seek Him first, and live within His will--we are free to be deeply contented regardless of whether the world recognizes our efforts as valid or not.

So, here's to the adventure of life in Christ.  ...Even when it looks like it's leading us to where we already are.

The Cube (or more accurately, The Rectangular Prism)

All packed!

Hopefully, it's now in storage somewhere in Bel Air, Maryland, until I tell them where to send it...

Changes

So, a lot has happened since my last post: the house I'm living in has sold, I received (and declined) a job opportunity with the same organization I applied to last fall, and I am now packed and ready to head back to the West Coast for a bit.

It all happened quite fast.  But it's good.  I'm excited.  Crazy fun things await me on my home coast.

I'll miss this quirky, eclectic city, though.  The distinctive neighborhoods, the wicked thunderstorms, the rowhouses, the fireflies, the way everything is so crammed together out here.

Mostly the people, though.  I found me good people here.

So, it's good, but it's a little sad, too.

I guess moving is like that.

Swallow Falls

My first camping trip of the year!  My friends and I headed out to Swallow Falls State Park in western Maryland.  There we are, at the top of Maryland's tallest waterfall:

Okay, yes, all of us on the trip are from the west coast, so it wasn't all that spectacular as a "tallest" waterfall.  To us, it was more of a waterstep.  But that didn't prevent its being quite beautiful.  And you could clamber around on rocks and even go behind the falls a bit, which was obviously fun.

We also encountered an army of tiny frogs at our campsite.  I mean, tiny:

They were everywhere.  Some were as small as my pinky nail.  It was impressive.

Add campfires, star-watching, a resounding thunderstorm, tarp forts, canoeing, more hiking, good conversation, freakishly large (beautiful) moths, and an almost continuous bout of hysterical laughter (it happens when Stephanie and I get together...what can I say?), and you have good times.

Skywatching

Every clear Friday, Johns Hopkins opens it's observatory to normal folk like myself.  Last night, I got to see Saturn and two of its moons, various stars, and a few globular clusters through their crazy-big telescope (although it's not as crazy-big as these are).  It was gorgeous.  And it didn't hurt that there was this little kid up there with his parents, who gasped with delighted excitement every time he saw something through the eyepiece.

There are so many things to be excited about seeing in this world of ours.  I hope I don't ever outgrow delighted gasping.