Again, I ask: Where would I start if I were to do so? Perhaps here: with the beauty and mystery of suffering.
I have come to realize through the many trials and sufferings that I have encountered that there, indeed, is a certain beauty and illuminating mystery to be appreciated. I have begun to learn to welcome suffering instead of fight it. The experience is richer that way for me, more vivid and full of wonder. More like teachable moments than like moments I want to push away from as though in a canoe pushing away from a predator on the banks and into the middle of a placid lake where life on shore can't reach me and, therefore, I sit unchanged and unaffected, unmoved. That's not the kind of journey I want.
I want the desert because I know that on the other side of this wandering is a promised land, something good and miraculous, abundantly flowing with proverbial milk and honey. The best part about this is that it's been promised to me. I want to be broken by God, as Israel was in the book of Hosea, so that only he can put me back together again. I want to be pruned so that I might bear much fruit. I want to be weak so that God's power might be made perfect in me. I want to live without pretense, and to live forward instead of backward; to have life more abundant.
For now, though, there's a certain sweet melancholy that gently holds my heart. Certain because it's one of the truest things I feel right now. Sweet the way watching a favorite sad movie over and over is sweet. And melancholy because that's the only way I know to describe it.
You see, I feel as though life for me right now is a bunch of paradoxes, a set of contradictions. I want to be known and seen but on the other hand I am still afraid to be known and seen. And I am also afraid to not be known and seen. I want to be as real to someone as the velveteen rabbit was to the boy, that real and yet not be a toy or a game. I want to build new relationships but a lot of the time I feel like being alone. And I want to let go of friendships that no longer are uplifting, but I'm afraid of not having new ones. I want to write because I feel there's something in me to be revealed, even if just for my benefit. But I'm afraid of my words. What will they reveal once they've been written? Will I want to take them all back? What will I come to understand about myself? About others? About God? What if there is something powerful in me waiting to be said? Will I be ready for that kind of responsibility, that kind of change? Mature enough to handle it? Or worse yet, what if I write and write and write and it reveals nothing new to me? There's nothing I have to say that hasn't already been said in a different way, perhaps using different words? What if I come to the end of it and I am unchanged? Will I be able to handle that far worse scenario? Would I be secure enough in my faith? What if I write and find I don't have much to say and that the feelings I have now were just wishful thinking and the result is nonsensical or incoherent? I want to write and I feel like a writer. But then other times I feel like a phony, like the words won't come out and I end up forcing them.
I want to love with reckless abandon but not lose myself. I want to give myself to my family - especially to those that I know won't be here much longer - but don't want to be hurt again. I long to go back to the places that meant so much to me in my childhood. It's as if there are secrets there that are whispering to me to come home, memories there to be unearthed. But how foolish might I feel if I go and find no secrets, unearth no memories? I want to set boundaries in my relationships but I look back and see that nearly all the boundaries I set in the past became walls that kept people people out or, at least, kept them from getting too close - close enough to hurt me. But they did anyway. I'm afraid of history repeating itself.
I need to trust myself with these things. More than that, I need to trust God with these things. I feel it is essential for my growth. What I somehow am capable of betraying myself? I knwo that can't stay where I am and also move forward. It has to be one or the other and I know that the one isn't getting me anywhere. I am tired but pushing off with my back foot in the starting block and waiting for the "On your mark! Get set!" and then the BANG of the gun. I am resting but persevering and enduring. I am a little melancholy but full of hope and wonder too.
Where is this narrow road leading me? Where will this desert take me, into what new promised land? What will these now blank pages reveal at the end? How will I have changed? Will I have fully and completely trusted God through the process? I am not strong enough to do this. No. But I do know that God is. And his power is made perfect in my weakness.
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