Hello, my name is Martha/Mary and I haven't figured life out.
My semi-awakened bones and muscles entered the dusky living room through my bedroom doorway. I made my way to the kitchen and discovered a violent, although small, display of pink sunlight sandwiched between the houses and hovering above the alley, almost snuffed out by the billowed clouds that the sky was made up of this morning. Back in the living room and in front of the heat vent that was blowing out gusts of warmth, I sat and prayed. I prayed that joy would come, but there was nothing...nothing tangible. I figured that the joy must be given in the act of "as you go" and so I finished my Bible reading and started some school. Still...there was nothing.
Working away on my school, I don't feel that I'm getting much done. In my life right now I'm ice skating on the spectrums of serving and accomplishing (Martha) and sitting and listening (Mary). I want to be getting things done, to be able to say, "Ah ha! That was a successful day." But none of that is possible if I don't allow myself to choose the better portion and actually say, "I'm going to let You work in me, then I will work."
I cling to to-do lists in an effort to feel accomplished, to be productive. But these little shreds of paper with spatterings of ink that I check mark or cross off don't change my need to love and be loved. To sit, listen, and allow truth to soak in across this skin and into this blood stream and to this beating heart.
I wrote it mid-morning, as I saw my day wasn't getting any more full of joy, but rather it was as if someone had punctured a hole into it and the joy was escaping quickly.
"I just really, really want something tangible." My fingers wrote the aching of my heart.
"Waiting and writing and writing and waiting all feels...arbitrary. I submit my assignments for school and read and question and write. But I want answers, not questions.
If my life was a discussion post on Blackboard, then I would greatly appreciate someone writing a response. But that's the catch. I don't want just anyone to write it. The Professor is who I really want to hear from, to tell me I'm doing well, to tell me that it's all under control.
But the Professor seems awfully quiet as of late. Maybe it's because I already know what the Professor has said:
"But You, oh Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head."
Imagine how wonderful the best moments of my life will be if I can learn to rejoice in all things...even this waiting nothingness with glimmers of sunlight that disappear beneath thick layers of cloud before the majority of the population is awake to see them.
But maybe that's where the beauty resides: in being one of the few that did see those glimmers and knows that they're there. Knowing that, though by all indicators it's an overcast day, there IS sunlight and there IS a brighter day coming and allowing that knowledge to change how I live and love right now. Is that what joy is? Taking hold of a promise and letting it infect you with song and dance, with delight that defies your circumstance?
Or maybe it's not even singing and dancing, but knowing that my body's terminal, my soul's eternal, and that even though the crop fails and all around me falters, I can and will still rejoice in the Lord."
I pause to think over what I wrote. A rare glimpse of sunlight severs through the sky and onto the place where I sit.
If lepers were cleansed as they went, then maybe I can be too. So I got up and got to work realizing the truth that had finally been pumped through the ventricles and was circulating my arterial system:
Joy is looking beyond circumstances and seeing God, and when I truly allow myself the time to stop agonizing over productivity and give myself the grace to be at His feet, I am able to live in the fullness of joy that knows there's sunshine behind the clouds.
No, discovering that didn't solve all my problems or help me figure life out. I still ache for clarity and tangibility and now, not later, but at least I can be honest with myself and I can preach to myself, and I think that, even though it's small, it's a step in the right direction.
Working away on my school, I don't feel that I'm getting much done. In my life right now I'm ice skating on the spectrums of serving and accomplishing (Martha) and sitting and listening (Mary). I want to be getting things done, to be able to say, "Ah ha! That was a successful day." But none of that is possible if I don't allow myself to choose the better portion and actually say, "I'm going to let You work in me, then I will work."
I cling to to-do lists in an effort to feel accomplished, to be productive. But these little shreds of paper with spatterings of ink that I check mark or cross off don't change my need to love and be loved. To sit, listen, and allow truth to soak in across this skin and into this blood stream and to this beating heart.
I wrote it mid-morning, as I saw my day wasn't getting any more full of joy, but rather it was as if someone had punctured a hole into it and the joy was escaping quickly.
"I just really, really want something tangible." My fingers wrote the aching of my heart.
"Waiting and writing and writing and waiting all feels...arbitrary. I submit my assignments for school and read and question and write. But I want answers, not questions.
If my life was a discussion post on Blackboard, then I would greatly appreciate someone writing a response. But that's the catch. I don't want just anyone to write it. The Professor is who I really want to hear from, to tell me I'm doing well, to tell me that it's all under control.
But the Professor seems awfully quiet as of late. Maybe it's because I already know what the Professor has said:
"But You, oh Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head."
Imagine how wonderful the best moments of my life will be if I can learn to rejoice in all things...even this waiting nothingness with glimmers of sunlight that disappear beneath thick layers of cloud before the majority of the population is awake to see them.
But maybe that's where the beauty resides: in being one of the few that did see those glimmers and knows that they're there. Knowing that, though by all indicators it's an overcast day, there IS sunlight and there IS a brighter day coming and allowing that knowledge to change how I live and love right now. Is that what joy is? Taking hold of a promise and letting it infect you with song and dance, with delight that defies your circumstance?
Or maybe it's not even singing and dancing, but knowing that my body's terminal, my soul's eternal, and that even though the crop fails and all around me falters, I can and will still rejoice in the Lord."
I pause to think over what I wrote. A rare glimpse of sunlight severs through the sky and onto the place where I sit.
If lepers were cleansed as they went, then maybe I can be too. So I got up and got to work realizing the truth that had finally been pumped through the ventricles and was circulating my arterial system:
Joy is looking beyond circumstances and seeing God, and when I truly allow myself the time to stop agonizing over productivity and give myself the grace to be at His feet, I am able to live in the fullness of joy that knows there's sunshine behind the clouds.
No, discovering that didn't solve all my problems or help me figure life out. I still ache for clarity and tangibility and now, not later, but at least I can be honest with myself and I can preach to myself, and I think that, even though it's small, it's a step in the right direction.
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