Rainy, overcast days suck. It’s hard to get out of bed, the sky only gives up muted tones of gray and it doesn’t help when your world already feels a bit gray. This week has been hard to keep that prior lesson of not looking too far ahead in focus. There are times where I want nothing more than to get to the end of this road and find the new normal. I can see it little by little, but it also feels achingly far away. You can’t speed it up nor slow it down. The pace is the pace is the pace. So you try to enjoy the ride and the beauty around you. Some days I do that well…others I want to speed it up.
You live life in the tension between the yet and the not yet, the here and now and a future that you can see but can’t touch. Faith and hope, doubt and uncertainty. Where you find yourself is somewhere in the middle. We humans like definitions. We do better when things can be defined on one end of a spectrum. (Side note, think about this the next time someone is arguing over politics, race, issues,etc., we like the clearly defined ends of the spectrum and the arguing person feels better if they can get everyone to their side of the spectrum). We feel comfortable there. We need to be able to tell where we are. Is this the beginning or the end? Are we there yet? I’m pretty sure on this journey I’m going to annoy the crap out of God asking him over and over “Are we there yet?” Today was a day that living in that tension was hard. I looked far ahead and wanted so badly to jump ahead to the end, to a new day, time and place. And it just felt like it’s going to be such an antagonizing journey, a long time coming. And then I ran into this….
He’s going ahead of me. He’s been where I’m headed and he knows the way. So I don’t need to be discouraged. He is with me. Whether I find myself in a valley of death’s shadow or a valley of dry bones, he’s there breathing life. He knows how to live in the middle. Quite frankly he hung in the middle, right between good and evil, between two thieves. He refused to declare one end of the spectrum the winner. He wouldn’t leave us in our nastiness on the one end, nor force us to an impossible climb of goodness on the other. Instead he came to the middle and met us there, where we were. He’s okay with the tension found in the middle. And as long as I don’t force that tension’s release, I will grow and find my way on down the road.
From The Whale's Belly 