I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me--that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. ― Anne Lamott
This was an uncomfortable year.
It started with the
waiting. Six months of waiting and wondering. Feeling stuck and stymied in
every direction. Being in limbo, no place of my own, spending my time in the
room at my parent’s house where all my belongings are stacked in boxes still,
or else migrating from air mattress to couch at many friends’ houses. In the
waiting I discovered a few things. Probably far less than there were to
discover, but I don’t think I was paying a lot of attention. I was distracted
by my fears and pride and I think I missed a lot of the things that God was
saying in the waiting. I discovered I’m pretty bad at waiting. I also
discovered that I have the most beautiful people on God’s green earth in my
life and they love me far more than I deserve. Thanks, people. If I look back
at that time and subtract the self-pity about waiting, it’s full to the brim of
blessed moments, all made possible by not having an agenda.
And then, Haiti. Five months of the uncomfortable year were spent
in Haiti. And it wasn’t the living in a bunk room with nine different strangers
every week or the heat or the cold showers or the lack of freedom that was
uncomfortable. I held a lot of babies. I love those babies. Some of them got
better. Some of them, too many, died. Some days I felt like I made a difference
and was really heroic. Some days I felt like I had totally muffed everything
there was to mess up and it was really a surprise I didn’t kill anybody. I felt
a lot of feelings and I thought a lot of thoughts. It might take me a decade to
sort through all of that, but I don’t think I need to get hung up on the
details. Somewhere in there, in all the feels and thinks, I changed. Things
moved and rearranged in me, some stuff torn away, some added. Things refreshed
and reawaked, others driven out and abandoned. And I think these eyes I look
through see a lot of life differently.
Challenge and change are uncomfortable, and we put an awful
lot of stock in being comfortable. But they’re full of learning and growth, and
that is LIFE. The real stuff, real LIFE. And I want that, that real life. I
feel more cynical about a number of things, some religious and American-cultural
stuff that we sometimes make a big deal about. When you see babies die, a lot
of babies, some of that stuff just seems like nonsense. I’m less certain of a
lot of things. Except for Jesus. I’m
more certain of Jesus. And love. Love never fails.
And these new eyes and changed heart are beautiful. I think
they are more like Jesus and that’s the direction I’m aiming for, so that’s
good, that’s what matters. But these eyes, this heart full of faces and
moments, they make it awfully hard to relate to people these days. There were a
lot of things in this uncomfortable year that I can’t really describe to
anyone, a place in me only Jesus knows. And I really love sharing with people.
It’s uncomfortable to feel like I can’t share all these moments with my people,
like I’m estranged and far away.
Stepping off the plane from Haiti, the second time around, I
had a call for an interview. A week later I got offered the best job I could
have asked for. That was weird, weird awesome, one of those weird awesome things
that God likes to do to surprise us. And while my heart still feels like it’s
stuck in a developing country across the sea, I’m looking at fancy apartments
in Houston and feeling on a totally different planet. In keeping with themes,
that’s pretty uncomfortable too. I’ve written before on how it feels to live in
between two worlds. Haiti and Houston are two worlds in different solar systems
I think. And somehow I belong to both of them, and neither. And as I float,
feeling a bit in limbo even as life gets a little more structured around me, I’ve
come full circle, yet I’m in such a different place than when I started.
And in this uncomfortable year, I’ve seen the most inspiring
beauty and crushing sadness of my entire life. I’ve been changed by what I’ve
been shown and I just don’t think I’ll fit back into that original packaging
anymore. I think this uncomfortable year is the start of many, many more
uncomfortable years, with much more learning, changing, growing.
And I think that’s a beautiful blessing.
