let it be

Hi friends. Been a while.

I needed it. Sometimes I just need a while to struggle and wrestle and let things simmer without attempting to make it useful... without extracting a contrived moral from the story before its time. Sometimes the chaos just needs to be chaos for a while, with no need to know or even attempt to guess how far I am from some semblance of clarity or that promised light at the end of the tunnel.

When I began writing, I was ecstatic to discover an awareness that had long been lying dormant... thoughts and impressions that had lacked any meaningful expression up until that night last July when I found myself typing and unable to stop. Something profound changed in me. Rather than my days rushing along in a never-ending stream of indiscernible hours, my days became filled with marked meaning-laden moments. Or, to be more truthful, I became present to the moments that filled my days. I gained the ability to hit the pause button on my life; to stop and look around once in a while. I found myself no longer merely existing; I found myself living. Listening. Seeing. Feeling (deeply... and for the first time, okay with allowing myself that freedom).

On the good days, this newfound awareness serves me quite well. I drink it up. I thank God. I have plenty of happy things to say.

On the bad days (or bad weeks)... it's acutely painful. Can I just say that? I don't like writing about those days. And when I do, I pressure myself to wrap it all up in a nice pretty package of "but I'm learning some valuable lesson." Then, I typically tie it up with a bow of "but I know God will work it out." Heaven forbid I leave it messy; unfinished; out of the box.

Chaos doesn't wrap up well.

But on and on I like to go, cutting even, straight lines on pretty paper and curling twirls of bright ribbon... furiously attempting to make life neat and well-ordered and lovely, at least on the outside. Yeah, I'm frustrated, yeah, I wonder why things don't seem to be working out... but I'm nothing - of no value whatsoever - if I'm not inspiring and hope-filled, right?

I ran out of inspiring about three weeks ago. To quote a favorite movie, I had lost the ability to bullshit. I'm sure I erred a little too much on the side of wallowing. I cried. I complained. I got angry. I almost scared myself a little. I said some things to God that were probably a little impertinent, given that, well, he's God, for God's sake, and I'm me, and we both know the track records of who's been right more often. But at least, for once, I wasn't attempting to say it was alright when it really wasn't yet. It was ugly, but at least it was real.

And when I came to the end of (or at least a significant pause in) my tirade this weekend, I found God there still. (That's not an attempt at a pretty bow; it's just a fact).

He used several things this weekend away to remind me, among other things, to get my grubby hands off his projects; there will be no need for pretty packaging when he's done. There's timing at work here, and I'm typically so in a hurry to see the end product, the moral, the lesson, the gift, that I'm forever missing the process.

(I think, although I can't be sure, that he may have also been saying that I would probably do well to lay off the pointed sarcastic comments aimed heavenward and attempt a little more patience. He said this more gently than we both knew I deserved).

I can stop pushing for a quick resolution... and yet, I can still live within that chaos in faith that there will someday be beauty wrought from it. I don't have to be bitter and depress-o to be authentic. Neither do I have to have a Full House-ish resolution to every daily struggle in order to be a woman of faith.

It's weird. In refusing to gloss over what's happening in my life with some flippant Christian cliche, I found them all more true than ever.

Dang it.