departure and the remedy for sadness

I was thinking about something I talked about yesterday with a mentor about how it is okay to grieve at death because it is not the way things ought to be. It seems to apply to my current situation of leaving Bryan and not returning.

I am never very emotional, but I have been lately; and every time I am sad at the prospect of leaving, I am immediately filled with doubts. Did I make the right decision? Was I misreading the situation and my own feelings about it? I want to fix what I perceive as a problem--this sadness that fills my heart. Do away with it like we do away with headaches or allergies or any other physical result of the fall.

But I am reminded that it is okay to grieve: that sadness at death or departure is not to be shunned or remedied. "In this life we will have trials, but take heart--I have overcome the world." I have always been so distant from any real trials, and thus distant from ever seeing my God overcome. Perhaps in the next week, I might learn to grieve appropriately: without allowing sadness to affect my decisions, but also without trying to cease the aching of my heart. And then I will be able to delight in seeing my Overcomer.

insufficient

Will I ever be good enough? I don't need recognition, I don't need fame. I just need to know if I will ever be good enough at anything to be effective for the kingdom of God.

I sometimes feel like I'm running in all kinds of circles despirately trying to be complete. And then something happens and someone outdoes me in my own game. And I realize once again that all these attempts of mine are bitterly insufficient.

I can't preach. I might say something nice like "I find my sufficiency in God." But even that doesn't feel like enough. God made homeless people too. What if I am an ineffective worker? What if I succumb to the prevailing opinions? What if I am never a good enough writer and my life's ambition is crushed and I am fruitless?

Didn't Jesus curse the tree that didn't bear fruit? I guess that must imply that we're all capable of bearing fruit, if we set our minds to it. Sometimes, though, the task of setting the mind is too much for me. Or, better, I am too tired for the task. My mind is too exhausted by the daily rounds of life to do anything about preparing myself for the act of bearing fruit.

These thoughts are too much for me today.

There is a professor that I want to write like. She has a way of capturing words with precision that I have never been able to grasp. In fact, there are quite a few people I would like to write like, and I seem to be always encountering new ones.

Why do I persist in wanting to be an author when it seems I must daily tell myself that they're not really better than me, that I can write just as well as they can? And yet writing is my love, and my passion, and sometimes even my life. Writing is my means of communication, my vocation, my calling. And I think, at least, that God has given me that gift and that love for a reason; that I may use writing to bless and change my society.

Am I fooling myself? Am I just like all those teenage punk rockers who think that their garage band will one day be famous?

Doubt and frustration with myself seem to be my daily companions. And yet God is faithful, and will direct me. I don't need to spend my life worrying about whether or not I am good enough or can ever be good enough. I'm not. Let's face that reality. I don't have to be. I only have to pursuit what I love with a passion that recognizes who God is and why he has placed me here.

And this will enable me to appreciate the good gifts of others; my professor's excellence of workmanship, my best friend's clarity with poetry, my mom's love of reading. And not feel these good gifts as hindrances to my own gifts.

well, it looks like I've finally managed to learn how to change my blog's look. I haven't particularly liked the look from the beginning, but I have been to ignorant to change it. Until today. So be proud.

This means, of course, that now all my posts are going to have to be in slightly more neutral colors than I have been used to. Hope that doesn't bother any of my more faithful readers (do I have any of those?).

God's grace

He has proven it to me over and over again--he is sovereign, and in his counsel there is fulfillment and grace beyond measure.

I am free to pursue my passions and callings thanks to the counsel of a wise friend and mentor and sister in Christ; free to do what I have always loved to do without feeling guilty.

I don't have to graduate from college.

And that realization has been incredible for me. I can be just as much of a person, of a woman, of a child and servant of God if I don't graduate as if I do. I am not being lazy, or copping out, just because I am choosing to pursue that which God has placed in my heart a love for.

God is bigger than my need to measure up, my need to find security, even my feminine need to love and be love. He is gracious toward my daily struggling to meet up to some ideal I have for myself, and has allowed me to drop that ideal in view of something much bigger.

I am finding myself curiously unable to BS a paper. Now, believe me, BS is not entirely commonplace with me--only when I don't really know what I'm talking about. But in this paper, I don't think I can get by with not knowing what I'm talking about, and I can't seem to figure out what it is I am talking about. So I am left in a curious dilemma of my own making; and I must go attempt to get out of it.

Well, it has been awhile, hasn't it? I am an irregular blogger at best, and never say anything of any import in my blogs. Well, today shall be different.

Life has lately presented me with so very many confusions. There is so much I want to change in my world, so much that I see that frightens me about the future. Can I change man's hearts? Can I change the fact that we continue not only to perform evil deeds, but to condone those deeds in others?

And prayer seems so ineffective. I pray, but it doesn't save Terri Schiavo or turn the heart of liberal judges. I pray, but my brothers and sisters in China still languish in work camps. I pray, but God doesn't answer.

Or perhaps he does, in a way that I didn't expect. Perhaps he is answering by bringing his kingdom nearer each day: bringing that day closer when this world with its wickedness and perversion will no longer be our life. When the stresses of today will be caught up and melt away as we see his glory, "that of the only begotten son, full of grace and truth."

Is it only God's promise to Noah in Genesis that preserves us from another flood? We've certainly been asking for it for the past three thousand or so years.