A Year Ago Tomorrow

I turn another year old tomorrow. Life is never quite how you imagined it would be anytime you stop to evaluate your current station in it. There is always one more thing you need to accomplish or one less thing you wish didn't exist in your life. More and more, I think this life is less about what dreams are achieved, and more about how we deal with it when things are far from turning out as planned. My life can be measured in stages established by goals set forth and by the grace of God accomplished (high school, college, graduate school, career, etc.)
Lewis said, "Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different..." For 364 days this year, I felt as if nothing was happening. I worked daily giving everything I had, and began it all over again the next morning. I often lay down at night hoping that something I did had eternal value, because it certainly didn't feel like it. Today everything is different. Today, there is the realization that sometimes the thing you have your heart wrapped around is a hope destined for disappointment. This realization leading you to believe that the course your life traveled has been irreparably altered. "The truth is, of course, that what one regards as interruptions are precisely one's life." Lewis. There is comfort in knowing that interruptions and loss are a part of life moving forward, changing. That such disappointments are the tools of making us more like Christ. When what I had intended for my life fails me, God's purpose for me becomes clearer. Moreover, my dependency upon him becomes a way of life. God knows that I look for him in times of trouble. God never lets me down. His love toward me is never discouraged by my deficiencies. His plans are never altered by my own. 

All of my  expectations have be frustrated.
All of my plans have be thwarted.
All of my desires have be withered into nothingness.
And I experience the powerlessness and the poverty of a child and sing and dance
in the love of God the Father, the Son and the Spirit. 

-Nouwen

No Man Is An Island

what follows are ramblings of someone who likely doesn't know the things she thinks she does about this life. I seem to want to write about singleness often. I should perhaps begin by saying that I love my life. It is a great one. I do not deserve half of what I have and all of my life is a gift of grace. I think I like to write about singleness because it puzzles me greatly. While I live it every day, it continues to be a mystery to me.  I'm grateful that at this moment I am laid back in this dark cool room and I have no demands beyond that which I choose to have at this moment. I have no current responsibility to be selfless and care for a child or a husband. Instead, I have time to write this senseless blog, and for that I am immensely grateful. 

Living the single life for me looks much like this...

Singleness is a vast sea with a violently crashing surface atop turbulent unknown depths. You are in these waters without so much as a raft or a choice. The waves and pitches are harsh but the dangers beneath the waters motivate you to struggle to keep your head above water. After such a prolonged period of time, you become so very tired. You long for land. A resting place. A moment to stop and catch your breath. Regain your strength. Then you meet someone. You think to yourself. "This is it! I've found land!"  However, when you reach it and place your feet on that sand you realize it is only a sandbar surrounded by miles and miles of water. You thought that perhaps it was an island..a place you could live. A place you could finally stay and set up house. So, you plunge yourself back into the raging waters in search of that perfect island. 

Or perhaps...

Singleness IS the island. Singleness is an ecosphere- a fully self contained and self sustaining circumstance that you existed within all along. Only you didn't know that when you met "him", you had ventured into a treacherous water for nothing. In pursuit of the thing that may lay at your feet already.  You are however certain, that on this island there is only you. Soon, you find you can live there quite nicely. Your needs are met and only some of your wants are lacking. So, you try not to think about whether or not "he" is out in those rough waters somewhere. Try not to think about how maybe he has a ship (or that maybe he would teach you to sail it..which would be awesome by the way). Besides, even if he was out there somewhere..he's probably a smelly pirate anyway. 

So, even if the truth is that singleness is the sea, salvation and rest is to be found within the waters. God sees to it that real living is possible in all circumstances. Swimming with the hope you will find land is no way to live. There is no promise of land for some. Only the sea. We cannot settle for mere survival just because our body may never leave this water. 

This one thing I know for sure...no matter who the man is...no man is an island. 

An Eyre About It

Never, is a word I use often. It is a pillow I use to suffocate hope-before hope is disappointed. It is true what C. Brontë wrote in Jane Eyre that, “To prolong doubt was to prolong hope.”  How strange that such a bleak endeavor should be so compelling. The issue of hope is of particular relevance when one is in a place of waiting. After all, what need is there of hope if not for the waiting?
   During such times, I frequently deceive myself into thinking that I await..with patience. Waiting so long that I come to believe that, "...no sooner have you got settled in a pleasant resting place, than a voice calls out to you to rise and move on, for the hour of repose is expired.” In truth, my resting place was far from pleasant. Instead, the soft place on which my head and heart lay, is doubt. My wait for longing fulfilled is not graceful. I am dissatisfied with whatever circumstance in which I find myself-if it is not the circumstance in which I desire to be. Then I long to "rise and move on". Not so that I may (having successfully completed my waiting) move on to the next stage or goal--but so that I can avoid waiting for the same old longings that go unfulfilled year after year. Feeling as if “I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.” At times, rising and moving on are the only things that make me feel as if my life is moving forward. 
   The heart of the matter is not doubt that I will ever have that for which I deeply desire---but that God is holding out on me. Doubt is not doubt at all, but the belief in the lie that there is more God is not giving me. 
  So at times, I spend my days in the tension between the lack of courage to hope and the energy required to doubt. How ironic that learning to rest should be so exhausting. 

Stillness

        I told someone seven years ago that if they met me again in 10 years, I would be an exemplary  model of patience. I have three years left and I am nowhere near that goal.  In fact, against all odds, I believe I have gotten worse! How could I have learned so little about stillness and patience in seven years? I think the answer lies in my deep sea of faithlessness. After all, how can patience exist without faith? My sea of faithlessness is a troubled water to be sure. Instead of the stillness that brings about ears that hear the voice of God and eyes that see his movement... I am "still seeking, still making little forward progress...because (I) haven't yet come to the end of (myself). (I'm) still trying to give orders, and interfering with God's work within (me). ” -A.W. Tozer