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All tagged faith
Like the wordsmithy magic I learned to pull in AP World History to make a random collection of facts tie back into a single idea, your calling is what pulls together strands of your life that seem at the time to be scattered and meaningless.
My journey since college has been anything but linear. When people ask me about the past few years, I either give a majorly abridged version or a laundry list of short term jobs that add up to me looking like an absolute commitment-phobe.
"You're just too nice," she said it like a revelation, but it was a phrase I've been hearing since the first grade. Usually right before or after, "Speak up. I can't hear you."
I wonder when "nice" because a derogatory term. When it got grouped in with words like pushover and passive and spineless. When did we start treating any sign of softness as a fault needing to be cured?
I kept reminding myself of these moments, and of the commitment I had made in a more peaceful state of mind, but even when I was in the air, hurtling across the Atlantic Ocean, no turning back, it felt like it might be a mistake.
That's sometimes how faith feels. It feels like you might have made the worst decision of your life. Because any act of faith has an inherent insanity to it.
The name of one of my favorite characters in the Bible is never mentioned. A full chapter in the Gospel of John is devoted to his singular encounter with Jesus, but no name. All he got was a self-explanatory title and unembellished back story rolled into one uncreative moniker: The man born blind.
You know that feeling, when you’re walking up a staircase in the dark and you take one more step than you need to? I call it the phantom stair. You have imagined that stair so vividly that it’s absence feels like a betrayal. Instead of landing on something solid, your foot sinks through air. For a moment you wonder if it will ever make contact with the ground again, or if it will just keep sinking forever.
I think unrequited love, as they call it, is a lot like that moment.
I was tired. Emotionally, physically, spiritually exhausted.
And for a moment I wondered what would happen if I just stopped caring. Stopped trying so hard to accomplish things that everyone says are impossible. Stopped being such an overachiever. What if I just stopped thinking so much?
