I am a little behind. Actually, I am a lot behind. But then again, what is behind anyway? What time restraints do I have? As long as time is not wasted, time is of little importance.
It has been a while since I have written on here. Longer than I would like, but at the same time, this just means that God has been using my time for other things. Computers get opened less and texts get answered hours later if at all. My journal, though, has been working overtime and the old school pen and paper have become more and more a favorite part of my day. Simplicity is winning, or at least fighting. God is winning, but He always wins.
There are so many things that have been blowing my mind lately. As much as I can try, this post will abstain from so many uses of "overwhelming" and "words can't describe," but I cannot promise you that it is that easy. If you know Christ and His beauty and overwhelming (oops) majesty, then you know that it is not easy. But, who likes easy things, anyway?
This feeling has been etched into my heart this semester. I have literally been thinking about it for months which may be the longest time I have gone without writing it all down in one place. Different parts of it are scattered throughout my journal pages and throughout the files of my mind and finally I will try to make sense of it all or at least sort it out because it is too good to not share. This one is a bit...abstract. But that just makes God cooler.
I am in Psychology of Emotion right now and we have talked about how there are all these different emotion words but there are also some emotions that don't have words in the English language. Makes sense, right? How many times have you had this feeling and just not known what to call it or how to classify it? Maybe that is just me, but I feel like it happens a lot.
There is this grief. Grief may not be the right word, but that is the closest I can get. Now this grief is simultaneous with intense joy, but do not lose me here. There is this feeling that I get from the deep sadness that comes with having to encounter everything of this world moment by moment that pours into my life these things that make me so happy and yet leave me so empty. This grief that gets me as I lie down to go to sleep and think over my day and all the people I am so blessed to know and fellowship with and all the good books I can read and good coffee I can drink and the A's I can make on tests. I think about the conversations I can have or the meals that I can share and the girls I get to pour into and hug and live life with and there are all these smiles going around and people you pass by everyday on the way to class that make your face light up in that three second time span you see them. And I think about how there is this new CD out that I can listen to whenever I please and the cool shoes I can buy and the letters from friends that make me smirk when I read them at anytime I want and the phone calls with my family that always leave me laughing. And now the air is so nice and the leaves have peaked and they flutter and fall around me as I walk across campus and yes, I think of all these things. I love all of these things.
Yet, there is grief in these things.
I go to bed with a longing almost every night. I think about these things and about how happy they make me and yet I am left with this uneasy, saddening feeling that they are not why I was created. They are not why I live on this earth.
My God, how beautiful is He. How someone can give me all these things and others and still leave me searching for more and more of Him. Restlessly longing for more of Him, knowing that the things of this world are pleasant yet fleeting, but that God is sweet and that the only thing this sweetness leaves is me coming back for more, running back for more. I have this feeling that I don't belong here with these things because I don't. I don't belong with things. I belong with my Maker.
So this grief may be confusing to explain because it comes with this unending joy that comes from being able to seek for more and more of that which I have tasted and seen is good. My old friend C.S. Lewis says this:
It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from.
When I was thinking of this feeling, a memory from playing softball in high school came to my head. It was my senior year, first game, first at bat. We were away and I was lead-off batter so I had the very first swings of the season opener. I was never a power hitter and everyone knew it, so while the rest of my team was slugging home runs left and right, I was always getting seeing-eye singles and the occasional double. So I get up to bat and swing. I hit the ball to right field and this is the first at bat of my senior year so I am excited to even make contact. I look up slightly on my way to first, yet it wasn't really about what I saw, but what I heard. A clanking sound. But I just kept running and running all the way to third which never really happens because I am not too quick, but the adrenaline was helping me and the wind probably was too. I slid into third safely and I stood up, brushed myself off, and realized--I just hit the top of the fence. Then within the span of about five seconds, my mind went into full-blown warfare over whether I should be happy or upset. Happy, that yes, I just got a triple on my first at-bat of my senior year, or upset that I was probably an inch away from hitting a homerun, something I had never done before and had convinced myself (and rightly so) that I could never do.
That closeness. Inches away from the ultimatum, the goal you long for and dream of and work toward. The joy that comes from getting so close and yet always being left with more. And you're left with this grief of knowing that you are so close and this joyful feeling that the closeness itself brings, but you realize there is something more, something greater and unexplored. You hit the top of the fence. Should you be happy? Should you want more? Both.
But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. -Hebrews 11:16
LMB
No comments:
Post a Comment