transitory transitions

I have moved across the country. I have begun graduate school classes. I have been slowly making new friends. I have been trying to find a church that I feel I can engage in. I have been getting used to a new roommate, a new apartment, a new life.

I have never experienced so many new major life transitions all at once. Adjustment takes adjustment. It doesn't happen overnight. Falling quickly into a schedule or a routine after classes begin doesn't always happen. Losing drive, focus, motivation, and energy may happen. Feeling guilty over feeling legalistic over forcing yourself to get into God's Word is only further compounded by more feelings of guilt as you continue to force yourself to read Scripture daily because to you that's the most logical way of getting back into a regular Scripture reading routine. Spending time alone or in prayer isn't as rejuvenating as it once was.

I wasn't expecting this kind of an adjustment. The first couple of weeks were pleasant and enjoyable, but now that classes have begun I have been second-guessing myself like crazy about committing to a five year program. Going through this long program is no guarantee that I will be successful when I get through, or that I will even have a good job placement, or that I will even enjoy what I will do. Is my becoming a clinical psychologist really in God's will for my life? Why has "God's will" become more of an obsession than a feeling of trust?

In this mess of feelings, confusion over unknown, heavy frustration, lost focus and motivation, I have to come to appreciate close friendships that will hopefully continue to deepen despite the long distance and I have come to realize more the importance and need for fellowship with other believers. God sometimes uses other people to speak to you so let Him....sometimes that's easier than trying to hear Him speaking directly to you while you're alone I am finding. I am thankful for friends who will sit and pray with you no matter how little sense you seem to make to yourself as you are barely able to articulate even the least remote feeling of something you can't even put a name to. 

I am also thankful that transitions are transitory. Even the hardest transitions don't last forever. Our lives are really just transitions. Some transitions are good, some are hard, and some are a little of both at times. Our transitional lives are preparing us for something far greater than just a series of seemingly endless transitions. Transitions such as the one I am in is greatly helping me to focus more on the life where transitions cease and only permanence reigns. 

Lord, you are our home

While in Bolivia last week my new roommate made a really neat connection as she was reading Psalm 90 in her Spanish translation Bible. The Spanish Bible translates verse 1 as "nuestra casa" -literally "our house." God is our house, our home, our forever dwelling place. 

In just a couple of days I am moving to the other side of the country. Moving to a new place is always exciting but always hard. Making new friends but leaving behind old ones. Engaging in a new church while disengaging from the old one. Missing family. Missing home. But remembering that God is my home wherever my new home may be. 

In these words from her poem "Awakening," Gunilla Norris offers us a day- break prayer:

          First thought -- as in "first light" -- let me be aware that I waken in You.

          Before I even think that I am in my bed

          let me think that I am in You.

          Each hour wake me further to find You.

          Let me relish in You, exult in You, play in You, be faithful in You.

          Let me be wholly present to living the gift of time.

Oregon, my new home

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: 

Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, 

But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, 

who is our home

-William Wordsworth

Kilby and coffee

Have you ever come across a super artsy blog where one single blog entry may be all about a wonderful cup of coffee the blogger had in the morning and they post several super up-close, artsy pictures of the brewed beverage where you can see the reflection of the camera's light on the little air bubbles that accumulate around the rim of the mug and the camera is angled just right to provide the perfect shadow striking a perfect contrast of light and darkness? 

Sometimes I think it is the more artistic, creative people who have an easier time of appreciating the small things in life -of course, there is a difference between appreciating the trivial, seemingly insignificant pleasures in life and appreciating art for the sake of what is considered art.

                      

Life is so full of wonder and excitement and pure joy yet we somehow easily forget this and we let -sometimes rightfully -this world's darkness drown out that joy. A former professor of English Literature at Wheaton College, Dr. Clyde Kilby, pleaded with his class at the end of one of his lectures that they might stop being unamazed by the strange glory of ordinary things and to start seeing things with the new eyes Christ has purchased for them. 

Here are some of Professor Kilby's resolutions that I hope I can adopt as my own someday:

I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence, but just as likely ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood.

I shall not turn my life into a thin, straight line which prefers abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course I shall often have to do.

I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their "divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic" existence.

At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.                                                                    

I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of Lewis Carroll, the "child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder."

I shall follow Darwin's advice and turn frequently to imaginative things such as good literature and good music, preferably, as Lewis suggests, an old book and timeless music.

                 

I shall not allow the devilish onrush of this century to usurp all my energies but will instead, as Charles Williams suggested, "fulfill the moment as the moment." I shall try to live well just now because the only time that exists is now.