The older I get, the blurrier my vision for the future is.
Maybe that’s just getting older and seeing how many paths you can go, and how life doesn’t dictate just one way forward. I’m not one of the lucky ones whose had the goal of being a doctor their whole lives. My desires have yet to coalesce into something solid, definitive.
My vision is more slow mornings in nature and drinking earl grey and doing something I enjoy that doesn’t leave me stressed about money. It’s all pretty vague. I’m truly living in the struggle to get my life together, and it can be discouraging when it seems to happen so naturally for some.
There’s that verse: where there is no vision, the people perish. It can feel like death, not knowing the way forward.
Related Post: my quarter life crisis is right on time!
I feel like I’m starting over in my relationship with God.
It’s not that we’re unfamiliar with one another. It’s more that our path to one another has been obscured by fear and disappointment and layers of confusion. Lately, it’s been painful and I’ve been wanting to avoid that pain (spoken like an Enneagram wing 7). All of the resentment was getting in the way of the clarity, the joy. Sometimes the only way forward is to start over. To go back to the beginning.
Since I can’t go back to Eden, I’m trying to be more invitational. I offer God my feelings, sit in the scriptures (a meander through a psalm), and then I’ll ask a simple question. The question can’t be so big. It can’t bear the weight of all of my fear for the future. I find it best if the question has a simple answer: yes or no. It’s the only way I can trust my ability to converse with God again.
In a few weeks, I’ll choose a new path forward in my career. I’ve spent so long overspiritualizing it. While I think God cares about what I do for work, I think he cares more about who I’m becoming as I work. And now I think that he has more specific plans for me, it’s up to him to make them happen. I refuse to carry the weight of my future as if I could. I can only take it step by step.
Related Post: Canticle: a Song of Songs | Quote Series
The first sweater I ever made was the step by step sweater by Florence Mills. Florence, the angel that she is, made a whole video tutorial of each step so that us amateur knitters could understand the construction of the sweater. It was by far an engrossing project. I spent hours watching TV (I managed to finish The Mentalist and Person of Interest – both great detective shows!). While I definitely want to go back and fix some of my major mistakes of my first sweater, I learned a million things by making it.
That’s what I find most people regret. It’s not necessarily choosing wrong. But not choosing at all.
One of my clear desires in the blurry fog of my future is going to seminary. I’d love to go and actually learn about church history, letting theology lead me to the heart of God. The other is living abroad. Though the idea terrifies me the older I get, it seems like such an amazing way to grow and build confidence and gain new perspective on the world. Though it’s not necessarily the right season for my desires, I pray they come to fulfillment.
Maybe the one good thing about blurry vision is that when it all comes together and becomes clear, it might just be better than I expected.
Signing off,
Gigi
Studying Life with Gigi 