kinetic waiting

An evening of listening to edgy music, some mind candy reading, and time spent organizing the contents of my room to my liking make things drastically better.

As far as my room goes, it's on the small side and can accommodate my enormous and beautiful bed, one six-foot bookcase and a dresser. (Oh the heights from which I have fallen.) I stacked a couple of antique wooden crates at one corner of the bed to make a nightstand, with a happily charming effect, and fitted as many shelves into the bookcase as possible. This necessitated a new basis of book organization, one heretofore untried by me: size. Up till now I have rigidly catalogued my books according to subject, and then alphabetically by author's last name; now they gleefully fill the shelves more or less randomly, and I find myself rather liking the chaos.

While I worked I devoted more thought and prayer to my future. I've never felt so frustrated with my lack of specific calling as I have these last few months. With so many fragments of what I know I'm meant to do -- writing, teaching, speaking, transforming the church, changing the world, traveling hither and yon, family -- nothing is merging into a cohesive whole. I sense God telling me, Wait, but not Sit There and Wait; rather, Go Do Something While You Wait.

I have time to decide. The first priority is paying off my debt, which should take about a year. While I'm doing that, I will also sort through all of my options, like Psyche in the grain room, picking and sifting, until the ants come along to help me. The possible choices are all a lot of fun to consider: Do I go to grad school? If I do, should I go to grad school in another country, or in the States? If grad school, should my focus be English? Or something more seminarian (ever since the winter of '07 I've been leaning toward learning ancient Greek and Hebrew, and training in exegesis and theology)? If not grad school, what about travel? Should I look for work in another country? Teach English as a second language? Or perhaps take a year-long mission trip to work with the rural population? Where should I go? South America, China, New Zealand, Australia?

So many possibilities, and all of them exciting. Mom doesn't seem so thrilled about me going overseas, but I'm rather captivated by the idea of a bigger life on the edge of something great -- fired through in a way that I haven't been in...well...a really long time, if not ever. During my senior year in college, my predominant dream was to spend a year at a time living in a different country, and I love pulling that dream off the shelf onto which I'd shoved it, and polishing the dust from it.

If I change my mind a thousand times a week, it's because I want to do all of it, and I can't settle on which option is best. I'm praying for some kind of synthesis of everything, because I want all these possibilities so strongly I think I'm almost starry-eyed.

At the same time I'm also trying hard to buckle down and live in the present. Since I know I tend to drift along in unformed dreams of the future, I need to start constructing a plan. Also to see where I can start making the difference I want to make eventually in the world begin right here in my hometown. I just don't know where that starting point is, so I'm praying about that too. Things are done very...traditionally, around here, and what I want to do isn't exactly traditional, and carrying things out alone isn't my strongest suit. This is what I get for coming to a small town, I suppose; it's a little more challenging assembling the threads that want spinning.

Lots of things to pray about, and lots of things to do. I'm asking for a clear vision, to be able to see the immediate and the distant with equal judiciousness and equal passion, and to live fully in both present and future. Life is now, not just someday, and while I live intensely in the now with an eye toward enjoying it (however much I bitch about things, I still like what I'm doing and where I am, generally speaking; I was a pretty happy child), I'd like to work some on living more practically in the present. It's easy for me to waste time waiting for my destiny to come get me; now I think I'd better use this time to gear up to go get my destiny -- for We must away, ere break of day, to find our long-forgotten gold.

I feel like it's almost time.

Meanwhile I forgot to take my allergy pill last night because I was engrossed in thinking about all these things and the medicine bottle wasn't in its usual place (I'm a routine-oriented creature because otherwise I'd forget to do anything; autopilot is the only thing, sometimes, that keeps me functioning in the real world), so today my skin is really damn itchy and covered in red welts. Perhaps I'll play up the impression that they mistreat me horribly at work.

Also this morning I got annoyed with one of the attorneys who shares my office space because for about a month now he has left half-full soda cans scattered all over his desk without attempting to carry them one room over to the sink and the recycling bin. When he gets into the office today he'll find a pyramid of pop cans where he usually sets his laptop.