Lately I feel as though I am walking through a dream. That place in between sleep and awake where you aren't sure if the events that you have been participating in are real or imagined. Whether the surreal events that have surrounded you for the past minutes or hours or weeks were something you created or something that is really happening, but you just don't want to acknowledge them. Maybe both?
It's a place where time isn't constant. Waking life has a very different sense of knowingness to it. Sometimes it's that wading through the murk of hardship and heartache that makes you feel like you are trying to play football underwater. Things just aren't going the way you had hoped. I do however feel a strange sense of peace and joy that comes and goes like a wave with some regularity. Like God is near me, holding my hand through this whole ordeal. Whispering in my ear that I am worth something more than everything that has happened in my past and that He has something better for me just around the corner. Sometimes I can feel Him sitting next to me. Holding me. Telling me that this isn't the life He has for me, that there is something much bigger and better I will be called to soon; fighting the powers of spiritual darkness for the kingdom deep in the jungles of 'Nam or something equally cool. Sometimes I feel like I have been stuck in the airport of life waiting for my plane of destiny to arrive due to bad weather and mechanical problems in Chicago. And I am getting sick of the fact that all there is for me to do there is read US Weekly and eat Panda Express from the food court while I wait for what seems like an eternity.
Anne Lamott says that when she first felt the Lord's presence when she was in her strungout alcoholic cocaine phase, she described God as a cat following her around her houseboat. She didn't want to let God in because we all know what happens when you feed a cat and let it in the house. I, however, would never blaspheme the Lord in such a way as to compare Him to a cat.
I cannot live with strife or anger in my environment. I need everyone and everything to be peaceful and happy. I cannot have chaos or disorder in my life. I think this is why I am such an organized neat freak. If everything isn't where it needs to go I feel a sense of instability. I prefer to be in the eye of the hurricane even if that means I have to poke it out myself. And I am also not the most patient person in the world. Even when I am the reason there is no peace (and lets face it I like to stir up the pot once in a while) I feel like I try my best to right the wrongs and make everything whole again as quickly as possible. Lately the peace I have tried to make has a very short shelf life. I want the shelf life of a Twinkie and I am getting the shelf life of brown bananas from the dining hall. I know this is probably because I am trying to make the peace myself rather than let God do it for me. I like to "help" God out sometimes. Like when I was little and would "help" my mom make cookies by dumping flour and a gallon of cooking oil all over the kitchen floor. Sometimes in the back of my mind I wait for God to freak out and tell me to go watch Sesame Street and get the H out of the kitchen.
The thing is that I am a talker. The way I work things out is by talking them out, even if it means talking in circles. It makes me feel better to talk in circles which may seem ridiculous to most people. But there are many things other people do to cope that I think are rather ridiculous. Like playing Zelda for 18 hours straight or watching bowling on TV. The problem comes when I am so ashamed of my feelings and my anger and my illogical and irrational emotions that I don't want anyone to know anything that is going on in my brain and yet everyone knows because you suck at hiding things....everyone knows your hurt and your pain because it is written all over your face. It's times like these I wish I had hung out more with the Drama Club kids in highschool rather than peppering them with punk rock misunderstood artist disdain and limericks that rhymed with thespians. Zelda cannot offer advice when you don't have the strength anymore to bless those that curse you. And the source of your current problems stares you in the face in the morning while you brush your teeth and it becomes too much to take. When it hurts too much to talk about the painful situations that follow you even into your bedroom and watch over you as you sleep at night. I haved lived through so much. I have made peace with death itself, and yet I cannot find the strength to look past the seemingly petty offenses taking place in my world. Things threatening to destroy forever that which is dearest to me.
The story goes that Plato and Socrates were having a conversation about the cycle of life. Socrates said that all things go through a stage of growth, followed by a stage of stability, and finally decay. But Plato said that stability is a myth. He said that living things can only grow or decay. We are either growing or decaying. Donald Miller writes that "everybody has to change or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons. I want to keep my soul fertile for changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently." Amen brother.
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