What I am.

It’s time for me to write as a transient.

It’s time for me to acknowledge that what I experience and how that affects my perspective causes a great rift between me and others.

It’s time for me to understand what this transience is doing, has done, will do to me.

No more shrugging, here is the low down.

Without going into too much history, I will say this: I have always had a heart for the lost. I remember lying in my childhood bed and weeping with a broken heart for those who were already in Hell. I decided early on I wanted to be different, go down another path, leave the path entirely maybe. I was dedicated to being what my Aunt Jean deemed as “unique.” That word was like a security blanket that I would cling to when nothing else made sense. And sure enough, there came a time when nothing made sense, when my family was scattered and divided, when my future seemed a big empty void of irrelevance.

But I was different, I reassured myself. It was ok that everyone else calmly packed up their high school memories and made off to college for 4 years and a degree (most often also a marriage). It was ok that I didn’t want that. It was ok that I didn’t choose that. I still regret not fully committing to what could’ve been an amazing path. I had dreams of packing up everything I owned into a VW van and driving across America seeking purpose, hopefully finding a way to see real people and love them, finding flight instead of iron clad shoes of stability.

I didn’t do that. Fear drove me to make a logical choice: college. Fear drove me from that choice to the heavy boots of Martin Luther College. I met my husband while there, yet another stable choice in the works. Consequences of choosing such an unnatural path weighed heavily on me. I was walking in someone else’s life. I became so uncomfortable and confused that gradually darkness enveloped me.

Who knows this about me? That I was made for a different path? How much do I share with others that isn’t preempted by and concluded with a shrug and a smile. As if no heavy weight had ever touched my shoulders.

Now I ask this: do I yearn to move because of fear? Am I afraid of stability? I don’t feel entirely equipped to answer that. How can anyone really know oneself? We are biased and hold skewed perspectives of historical events in our lives!

I admit, I don’t fully know myself.

What I cannot continue to ignore is this sense of unrest in my heart. How long has it resided there? My whole life? And it only seems to be growing.

My friends conclude that I am discontent. That I have removed myself from where I am into my own bubble so that I cannot even find purpose in any given place I geographically reside. I wish to dispel that opinion!

Is it wrong to want to go somewhere where hearts and minds are open to the idea of an Almighty God? “That’s too easy. The real challenge is here,” says my friend. Do I want to surround myself with hard-hearted people instead of people who earnestly desire to know a power bigger than themselves? Even just typing that brings tears to my eyes…

If God has given me a heart for these people… should I just go ahead and take that hateful normal path and ignore that I KNOW my path is different? How can I?? Every logical path I consider sits crooked in my heart, like an awkward unbalanced load. Sensibility soothes my passions, reassuring me of good intentions and safe choices. But passion does not die, it only cries out louder and longer.

Now I have to ask an important question. Have I left already? In mind and spirit, am I already gone? I know that God’s plan unfolds in His time. I know that He refines and shapes and prepares in ways and lengths I cannot even begin to fathom. I believe my heart will be unsettled until its call is made complete.

But I am here. Now. And I pray that God will show me what to do with this here and this now. In the meanwhile, I cannot check out. I cannot fold my arms and wait until I get my heart’s desires, no matter how well intended they are.

I need your guidance, YHWH. You who have created me, with purpose with passion with a different path… Show me how I can serve you here. Show me how I can grow closer to you here. Give me the sight to see your plan for me here. Show me the doors you open. Father, I need your strength, your Spirit… Keep my heart on your heart’s desires, my eyes on what YOU see, close my mind to useless distractions.