My break is here, and I have loads of work to do, but not much is getting done. Why is motivation lacking when I need it the most? Why must my personal life get complicated when I need to focus on schoolwork?
I have been thinking about choices lately. I make so many choices daily--most of them little ones, I guess--and I am used to taking responsibility for my choices. For instance, do I mark research essays or go out to eat with friends? If I go out to eat, then the work load piles up for later--but I know that it is my choice, my doing, and I will live with the consequences. I've made some choices lately that I'm not sure about--that is, I'm not sure what the results will be. Funny how some things seem so lovely at the time and in retrospect I wonder what on earth I was thinking. And yet the choice has been made and I must live with the result, and if I am hurt in the process it is because of the decision that I made.
Taking responsibility for one's actions is a little scary sometimes.
I have also been getting periodic updates from a woman in my church in Sioux Center. She is pregnant, and her baby has been diagnosed with spinal bifuda (I think that's right . . . ), so she is undergoing special treatments in Nashville. She sends out an email update once or twice a week, and, despite the uncertainty and scariness of her situation, her faith in God is unwavering. She fully trusts that He is in control and is taking care of her and her baby and her family. Her faith humbles me and gives me hope at the same time. And I look at my life here, and the choices I am making, and I wish I had her faith and certainty. I wish, too, that I had as many people praying for me as she does--and then I think of all of you, all my friends wherever you may be, and I know that you are praying for me, as I am praying for you. That, too, is both humbling and hopeful.
I am experiencing so many new things here in Montana. The ways people think are so different--I am coming across myriad new ideas and worldviews. I am glad for this, but at the same time I am challenged. Challenged to consider these new perspectives; challenged to test them against long-held beliefs; challenged to fit new and old together in a way that makes sense; challenged to be faithful while simultaneously trying to define just what 'faithful' means. Challenged. I am glad for the challenges, but at times (such as now) I want to step back from them all and simply rest.
Today I called my friend Lindsay here in town, and we had tea and then took a walk in Rattlesnake Canyon with her two sons. Seth is only three months old, so I carried him in a baby carrier against my chest, and he slept the whole time, his few pounds no burden, his warmth comfortable in the coolness of the afternoon. Lindsay carried Corin in a child backpack, and we walked amongst the Ponderosa pines, inhaled the fragrance of the air, heard the water of the creek splash against the rocks, and talked; for those few hours I was able to step back and rest from the challenges and confusions of my life and simply enjoy the beauty of Montana.
The sun is setting now, and dusk is falling over the valley. It is a beautiful day, a beautiful evening. And my homework is calling to me, threatening to crash down upon me if I don't start working on the pile soon. So enough procrastination for now . . .
I have been thinking about choices lately. I make so many choices daily--most of them little ones, I guess--and I am used to taking responsibility for my choices. For instance, do I mark research essays or go out to eat with friends? If I go out to eat, then the work load piles up for later--but I know that it is my choice, my doing, and I will live with the consequences. I've made some choices lately that I'm not sure about--that is, I'm not sure what the results will be. Funny how some things seem so lovely at the time and in retrospect I wonder what on earth I was thinking. And yet the choice has been made and I must live with the result, and if I am hurt in the process it is because of the decision that I made.
Taking responsibility for one's actions is a little scary sometimes.
I have also been getting periodic updates from a woman in my church in Sioux Center. She is pregnant, and her baby has been diagnosed with spinal bifuda (I think that's right . . . ), so she is undergoing special treatments in Nashville. She sends out an email update once or twice a week, and, despite the uncertainty and scariness of her situation, her faith in God is unwavering. She fully trusts that He is in control and is taking care of her and her baby and her family. Her faith humbles me and gives me hope at the same time. And I look at my life here, and the choices I am making, and I wish I had her faith and certainty. I wish, too, that I had as many people praying for me as she does--and then I think of all of you, all my friends wherever you may be, and I know that you are praying for me, as I am praying for you. That, too, is both humbling and hopeful.
I am experiencing so many new things here in Montana. The ways people think are so different--I am coming across myriad new ideas and worldviews. I am glad for this, but at the same time I am challenged. Challenged to consider these new perspectives; challenged to test them against long-held beliefs; challenged to fit new and old together in a way that makes sense; challenged to be faithful while simultaneously trying to define just what 'faithful' means. Challenged. I am glad for the challenges, but at times (such as now) I want to step back from them all and simply rest.
Today I called my friend Lindsay here in town, and we had tea and then took a walk in Rattlesnake Canyon with her two sons. Seth is only three months old, so I carried him in a baby carrier against my chest, and he slept the whole time, his few pounds no burden, his warmth comfortable in the coolness of the afternoon. Lindsay carried Corin in a child backpack, and we walked amongst the Ponderosa pines, inhaled the fragrance of the air, heard the water of the creek splash against the rocks, and talked; for those few hours I was able to step back and rest from the challenges and confusions of my life and simply enjoy the beauty of Montana.
The sun is setting now, and dusk is falling over the valley. It is a beautiful day, a beautiful evening. And my homework is calling to me, threatening to crash down upon me if I don't start working on the pile soon. So enough procrastination for now . . .
I wish I could write like you...
ReplyDeleteRandom sounds without any apparent purpose or meaning and yet as I paused to listen to them I found myself hearing them with something more than just my ears, to the point where they became in some way enormously meaningful… all those sounds together; or others like them, are the sounds of our lives. What each of them might be thought to mean separately is less important than what they all mean together. At the very least they mean this: listen. LISTEN. Your life is happening. YOU are happening… a journey, years long, has brought you through thick and thin to this moment in time… think back on that journey. Listen back to the sounds and sweet airs of your journey that give delight and hurt not; and to those that give no delight at all hurt like hell. Be not afraid. The music of your life is subtle and elusive and like no other- not a song with words, but a song without words, a signing, clattering music to gladden the heart or turn the heart to stone, to haunt you perhaps with echoes of a vaster, farther music of which it is a part… the question is not whether the things that happen to you are chance things or God things, because of course they are both at once. There is no chance thing through which God cannot speak… even the moments when you cannot believe there is a God who speaks at all anywhere. He speaks, I believe, and the words He speaks are incarnate in the flesh and blood of ourselves and of our own footsore and scared journeys.
ReplyDelete-Frederich Buechner The Sacred Journey
so its over now, hey? so sorry... well, it just means we're that much closer to the summer... (and the end??) hooray!
ReplyDelete