Sunday Update: Now

There's a hilly field that I pass by on my way to and from church.  When my preschool job (which is also at my church) starts again, I'll be passing this field several times a week, as I did this past school year.  This field is next to a white house, and all of it is enclosed by a brown fence.  A chestnut horse often peacefully grazes within my view as I drive past this field.  I guess I'll be a Kentucky girl no matter where I live, because I happen to very much like looking at chestnut horses in hilly fields next to white houses, enclosed by brown fences.  My parents taught school  in a county that was half an hour away from where we lived, and I went to elementary and middle school in the county where my parents taught instead of in the county where I lived.  As a result, I spent a great deal of my childhood staring out car windows at Kentucky fields and hills, white houses surrounded by brown fences, horses and cattle grazing on green grass.

It's amazing that I've even paid enough attention to the hilly field I pass several times a week to be able to tell you the color of the house, horse, and fence.  Such things should be commonplace to me, and often times they are.  There is a difference between Kentucky hills and North Carolina hills, just as there's a difference between Kentucky mountains and North Carolina mountains.  But I've spent so much of my life driving past scenic country farmland that I often take all the separate beauty for granted. 

But today, on my drive home from church, that field I pass all the time looked different.  Thousands and thousands of golden flowers (I think they were golden rods) were scattered across the green.  Great purplish bushes contrasted with the gold, causing me to mentally pause (if I had actually paused, the guy riding my bumper would have gladly rear-ended me).  I couldn't stay there, but I took a moment to commit that beautiful scene to memory, because the way nature keeps moving and changing, that field of flowers could be gone tomorrow.  And something tells me I was meant to see them before they passed away.

Next week, the girls I watch go back to school.  I've uploaded all of the pics I took with them this beautiful summer.  It has all gone by so quickly, and I'm glad for the memories I've made with them, as well as a bit regretful that I didn't try to make a few more.  This time of my life is almost over, and soon I'll just have the girls in the afternoons when they get out of school.  I'll be caring for a new classroom of children in my preschool (while saying another sort of goodbye to the ones I cared for last year, who will be across the hall in another classroom, getting loved on by new teachers who aren't me).  I'll be developing new relationships through work and church, choir and my running group, and God only knows what else.  I'll hopefully be writing/editing/querying again with renewed vigor.  And I'm reminded that I am a person who is often resistant to change.  But change happens.  Nothing can stop it.  It's the way life is. 

In the past year, God has done a lot in my life.  He brought me from a very long (5.5 years!!) season of winter into a season of springtime.  I've grown because He's changed me.  And since that winter was so long, I guess I expected the spring season to last a long time, too.  But the thing about spring is, it never seems to last.  There is a tremendous burst of life that all too quickly blossoms into summer, and summer just sort of relaxes into autumn.  And everything changes, once more. 

There's a line from Shadowlands (one of my favorite movies about the later life of C. S. Lewis) that fits my mood right now.  C. S. Lewis was sitting at a desk talking to a friend, and he said, "Give me blizzards and frozen pipes, but not this nothing time.  Not this waiting room of the world."  He was expressing his thoughts about the change--that transitional period between seasons and stages of life.  It was no longer winter, but spring had not yet come, and he felt restless.  And part of me has been restless, too.

The winter that I lived in for 5.5 years wasn't all bad, but a lot of the time I just felt like a frozen Narnia waiting for Aslan to come, bringing Christmas and spring in his wake.  Now that I've lived in a new and glorious Spiritual spring for a short year, I'm sensing that God's bringing me into another season.  Perhaps He's already brought me out of spring and into summer without my knowledge, because I sense that autumn is approaching--both in a literal sense (obviously; there is no stopping the calendar) and a Spiritual sense.  I sense a harvest coming.  I think the harvest is going to involve many things.  Since God has grown me so much in the spring, I expect the harvest is going to be plentiful. 

I am almost afraid to hope for it, but I have a strong sense that a lot of the things I've been waiting for for a VERY long time are going to come to fruition.  I don't know what that fruition will look like, but right now I am cautiously expectant, waiting (and trusting...always waiting and trusting) for what God's going to bring. 

Since I've sensed the end of summer coming upon me, in the past couple of weeks I've checked out tons of books from the library, hoping to read as much as I possibly can before I develop a scheduled routine that makes reading for fun nearly impossible.  I've taken a last-minute summer vacation in the only way I can financially afford to take one--by letting my mind enter into stories. 

One of the books I've read has just served to reemphasize the idea that things are going to change in my life for the better.  And maybe that means that I'm going to have to have a few final struggles before I can experience all the good things that harvest will bring.  Because harvesting is a lot of work.  It involves sweat and labor, long hours and effort.  It involves decisions and discipline, but there's joy in that, too.

And the time will come for that soon.  Very soon. 

Right now, the harvest still hasn't come.  I've still got some books from the library that want to be read.  I still have a couple weeks before the preschool job starts.  The calendar is moving.  The flowers are going through their life cycles.  Everything is changing.  But now, right now, is a gift from God.  There's nothing wrong with remembering; there's nothing wrong with looking expectantly towards the future.  These things are very good, but not if they interfere with the joy that's to be experienced in the now.  It might be one of those "nothing times" right now, but I don't feel restless anymore. 

Sometimes I have to pursue peace, and peace is really something worth pursuing.  That's something God has taught me a lot in this past Spring season.  But I've learned that sometimes peace has a way of sneaking up on you and taking you by surprise.  Right now, peace has surprised me.  I'm exceedingly thankful for this time.  The golden flowers on the hilly fields, the gently moving clouds in the blue late summer sky, the smells and sights and sounds of the world holding its breath...waiting for what the next season has in store. 

This is a good time to be alive.

Sunday Update: Tunnel Vision?

I've arrived at that time of the year when I just want to run around in circles screaming, "I NEED A ROUTINE OR I'M GOING TO PUNCH THE CALENDAR IN THE FACE!"  I'm well aware of the fact that my calendar doesn't really have a face--well, actually, it does.  It has lots of them.  It has faces of cute snuggly kitty cats, and I seriously doubt I could ever bring myself to really punch their furry faces, even if they're just printed on shiny paper.  Come to think of it, since they are just printed on shiny paper, punching them would not do any good.  I'd probably just hurt myself by punching the wall behind their shiny calendar faces, so I'd be left without a routine or a...functional hand.  And since I don't have health insurance, punching walls would be a bad idea.  I like having functional hands.

But there's a light at the end of the tunnel.  At least, I think there is.  I'm hoping that I don't get to the light at the end of the tunnel just to find that it's some kind of artificial light inside another even longer tunnel.  In less than a month, I'll be on a fairly regular schedule with the majority of my jobs.  I'll have to be up and ready at about the same time every morning--with the exception of Saturday, when I get to sleep in a whole hour (or use the extra time to go for a run.  I'm trying to make exercise a priority again, because this summer killed all my discipline, or at least knocked it down and stole its lunch money).  While I'm greatly looking forward to a routine, I'm hoping that something doesn't happen to mess it all up. 

I'm not trying to be a pessimist.  It's just that in the past week, I've had scheduling conflicts, and I already know there is another to come  One of these days, I might find some way of being in two places at once, but at this stage of my life, I am still unable to break the laws of physics.  I have managed to bend them slightly, but that's not going to help me when I'm scheduled to be at two different jobs in two different places at the same time. 

So I'm facing a problem where I'm going to have to let someone down, and that just makes me feel irresponsible.  And while I'm not sure how this particular sheduling conflict happened, I know there's no one to blame except for myself because I have tried to do too many things at once.  I'm just hoping that it's a one time thing, that once all the craziness of starting new schedules dies down into a comfortable routine, I'll be able to handle all of it without having to be two places at once.

But even if all of that works out, I've done some basic budgeting, and I've come to the conclusion that once I do reach the end of this routineless, undisciplined tunnel in which I am currently living, I might find that the light has been shut off.  It's hard to imagine that even with working 4 jobs, I"ll be struggling every month to make ends meet, but that's reality.  I'm not trying to be a pessimist, but if you haven't figured it out by now, I'm a hard core realist.  And the reality is, unless I've overlooked something, I'm not gonna have a lot of grocery money in the next few months.  The light at the end of the tunnel isn't going to work too well if I can't pay my utility bills.  I'm 100% sure it's all going to work out.  I'm 100% sure God is going to provide for me in one way or another.  There's not even a fraction of a percentage that doesn't know that deep down.  I'm just a coward because I don't like having things hard.  And it's probably going to be hard because trust is hard, and discipline is hard, but God loves me too much to just make everything easy as I am sometimes dumb enough to ask Him to do for me. 

But walking down a tunnel is not easy.  Sometimes the tunnel is dark and you can't see anything.  So you just have to trust, taking one step at a time, trusting that it's going to lead somewhere good--trusting the One who's guiding, even in the times when you can't sense Him there.  Sometimes you can see light at the end, but you don't know if it's the light that means hope and daylight, or if it's the kind of scary unknown light that makes you want to shout out, "NO!  Don't go towards the light!  DON'T GO TOWARDS THE LIGHT!" 

Sometimes, I'm really a lot happier in the darkness of my tunnel.  It's nice and quiet and safe.  It takes guts to walk towards the light, not knowing where it'll lead.  I've had a great, restful summer, but the wind is starting to change.  I'm no longer feeling restful.  I'm feeling restless.  There's lots work to be done, and not all of it has to do with the 4+ jobs I'll be juggling.  I need to embrace discipline once again--physically and spiritually--even if it means patiently nursing it back to health.  I need to dream again and not wallow in self-pity that has little basis in real-life.  I need to take a step forward, even if I can't see what's ahead.  I'm tired of not doing things just because I don't know how to do them.  Sometimes, you just have to do something and see what happens.

I guess that means I'm walking towards the light...as soon as I have time to breathe!!!