Little Losses

"There is no ongoing spiritual life without this process of letting go. At the precise point where we refuse, growth stops. If we hold tightly to anything given to us, unwilling to let go when the time comes to let it go or unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used, we stunt the growth of the soul.

It is east to make a mistake here. 'If God gave it to me,' we say, 'it is mine. I can do what I want with it.' No, the truth is that it is ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him, ours to relinquish, ours to lose, ours to let go of-- if we want to find our true selves, if we want real life, if our hearts are set on glory.

Think of the self God has given as an acorn. It is a marvelous little thing. A perfect shape, perfectly designed for its purpose, perfectly functional. Think of the grand glory of an oak tree. God's intention when he made the acorn was the oak tree. His intention for us is '... the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.' Many deaths must go into our reaching that measure, many letting goes. When you look at the oak tree, you don't feel that the 'loss' of the acorn is a very great loss. The more you perceive God's purpose in your life, the less terrible the losses seem.

...the lesson of the seed had not yet been fully learned. There must be a relinquishment. There is no way around it. The seed does not 'know' what will happen. It only knows what is happening-- the falling, the darkness, the dying.' ...'The first step into the realm of giving is... not manward, but Godward: an utter yielding of our best. So long as our idea of surrender is limited to the renouncing of unlawful things, we have never grasped its true meaning: that is not worthy of the name, for 'no polluted thing' can be offered.' "

-- Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity

This week, all of the uncertainty is bearing down on me. It seems to be all crashing down, like the day the shelf fell off the bedroom wall and the broken pieces of glass cut my foot. I have tried to avoid writing in this space when I am just generally depressed because I often feel stupid later for putting something out into the void that isn't actually very true. I try to avoid emotional diatribes here because it seems unhealthy to give my unbalanced brain chemistry reign in areas connected to reality. But today, this week, I need to let it out. Vent. Say a few things to someone, even if it is just the black background with my picture and the archives waiting on the left. Maybe someone real will also hear it and maybe sometime soon, I will feel like everything is going to be okay.

I wondered last night if maybe I've run out of trust. I've been working on trust a lot since this little year of our started off, but I feel like much of it has been deflated now. It feels too hard now to accept much love, truth be told-- I find myself in a tense posture, feeling again mostly like a lost little burden. I'm trying really hard. I think I am trying really hard at everything and I am weary.

I wonder if I am just exceptionally tired, that my sense of defeat has more to do with a series of nine-hour, break-less work days, a transition to a more demanding position, and a lack of sleep. Regardless-- I am tired. I am struggling to peaceably accept this season when I wonder if I will ever find my feet. I feel like a failure-- that I can't work hard enough, try hard enough to do what I set out to do. I will make it work is often my mantra. As I've grown up, my mom has continually said, "She has always known what she wants." And now-- I wonder if that is a blessing or a curse. I thought knowing what you wanted gave you something to seek, provided the luck of having something to strive for, a set direction-- I often think that it only takes a certain amount of steps-- one foot in front of the other-- to get there. But these days, it feels as though my legs might be broken, or my feet weighed down. The stepping seems impossible yet the destination seems more imperative than ever.

I opened 23 tabs yesterday. Total number of art jobs posted: 0. I was talking to a friend the other night about why it feels so hard just to commit myself, why I can't seem to sit down and accomplish anything, why I can't get anywhere in the job search for the fall and she said, "Maybe it is because it is hard." Maybe it isn't me. Maybe we really are in a recession and maybe everyone does hate giving money to education. Maybe I've been in denial, saying, "It will still work out." It doesn't seem to be working out.

I feel as though I am between a thousand proverbial rocks and hard places. Maybe it feels like everything is bearing down because my lease is up in a month and 20 days and I am struggling with the question of whether or not it is wise for me to sign a new lease in a city with one of the highest costs of living in the state. I am struggling with the fact that this over-expensive city also seems to be the best place for my heart, that the high rent of this city has been mingled with an almost instant realization of the community I've been longing and begging for for many years. I've paid a lot in rent in exchange for an almost instant sense of home. The question perhaps remains: has it been worth it? Will it continue to be worth it when the time comes to repay it all?

I am caught between the rock of needing independence, distance, and autonomy and the hard place of not being able to get there without dependence, debt, and the humiliating act of continuing to ask for help in the midst of an inability to believe that it is freely given. It is a simultaneous pursuit of enough security-- a land to jump from-- to get to a place where I can achieve a bit of security. I'm chasing my tail. It is the catch 22 of needing a living space where stress and burden do not take energy from the pursuit of the means to live in a place free from daily stress and burden. It is the continual asking "Lord, should I go somewhere else? Do I need to start over again?" and hearing no yes and wondering if the no I feel is only my own longing heart, the desire for the world to stop spinning. Or is it possible that I could trust my own heart because the Spirit is there? I think the only way to escape the catch 22 is to pick up one foot and hope the other lands on solid ground.

My sheep know me and they hear my voice. It feels as though so much of me is being put to the test these days. I daily feel the burn as I walk through fire after fire. "Do you love me, do you love me, do you love me?" He seems to say over and over. I have meditated often these past 5 months-- maybe the last year-- upon the thought that we cannot truly encounter the Father, our Creator, until we venture beyond ourselves. I am in over my head. Treading water. Yet, it feels like the line between trust and foolishness is a tight-rope walk. Paul says that the way of Jesus is foolishness to those who are perishing. What about those from whom I must borrow to pay rent? Is money really just a drop in the bucket?

The last few years, I have really been exploring the thought that perhaps money doesn't actually have as much of a final word as the Great Capitalist They seem to lead us to believe. Is God able to provide even the means to repay my debts? Is he more concerned with my heart, my trust in him, the path he has prepared for me than something so small as money? Or am I being disobedient in my choice to live in a place I cannot afford? Can I really afford to live anywhere besides a basement steeped in an old, toxic life?

I made the choice to move here because I believed that it would provide the opportunities to grow in community, because I hoped for a place that my art and my Spirit could flourish, because I needed to be distanced from old habits and patterns. I took the step, as difficult physically and emotionally as it has been, because, for reasons I still feel shy to really lean into, I felt that the Lord was speaking into my heart. I remember, one year ago, probably even to the day, saying to the Lord, "Are you sure? Will I be able to afford it? Will you provide for all of my needs there? Am I being foolish?" I begged him to open a door to a place that I could foresee being able to make it on my own. He did not. He only turned my face here. He said, "Go."

And so I came. And here I am. Sitting in this living room, looking out at the mountain, enjoying my yellow chair on the wood floors surrounded by the cool air blowing in through the windows. I am going to look at an apartment in an hour or so. A studio-- a place of my own. A place I might be able to afford for a few months and then after that-- uncertainty. Trust. I might have to keep asking for money. I have no idea.

Yet, the impulse to rest seems foolish. It seems more responsible to keep running, to keep worrying, to sacrifice all that I seem to know in my heart, throughout the whole of my body and being for the sake of the math. This other, ugly dissenting voice keeps saying I ought to be more self-sacrificing, that being realistic means denying my spirit, abusing my body, ignoring the still small voice for the sake of logistics. "Don't risk," the voice seems to say, "it is foolish and may yet land you in a place you cannot rescue yourself from." But isn't that the point-- trusting that the Father truly loves us enough to give us dreams so big that we may land in an unexpected place of rescue in our reaching for them? That is the voice I have come to know in our God.

So today, much is uncertain. Truth be told, I have little hope of teaching in the fall, but the greater truth seems to be that giving myself that grace feels better than anything else. I think I've had this image of "success" in my head that says I ought to be able to keep plunging forward at breakneck speed, but the picture of "right" in my heart feels more like giving myself a break just to be and live. I don't yet have the footing, the peace, the space, or the stamina to pursue this right now. For the time being, for the summer at least, the Lord has been faithful to provide a job that seems to be enough both for my spirit and for my finances. I do not know what the end of August or September or the coming year may look like, but taking the next season as it comes feels better to my Spirit than scrambling for something that just doesn't seem possible for me to conquer right now, for whatever reasons. I seem to continually be fighting this battle of knowing how much I ought to attempt to prepare for the future and how much I need to listen to my own limits and simply allow the Lord to pursue and provide.

More than anything, I long for a little time in my life where I can come home from work and not be thinking so hard about what else I need to do for another full time job, a little season where I can simply follow my passions, my desires, my heart without a million other pressures that feel like the whole of my entire future adult life bearing down on me. Could this be the gift of a Father who knows me better than myself? One who knows what I need more than the University, with all of its commands about professionalism and success? Would it be just like him to give a season of rest? True rest? Maybe.

I want to end this post with a passage from John 14 given to me a few weeks ago and has continued to flood me. I am still meditating on what it really means for me during this process, but it still nevertheless has brought a great deal of comfort.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God. Trust also in me. In my Father's house, there are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you may also be where I am.

I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and you have seen him... And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the son may bring glory to the Father. you may ask for anything in my name and I will do it... 'the world cannot accept [the spirit of Truth] because it neither sees him or knows him. But you know him for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live you will also live.

... But the counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid."