Waiting

Step by step by step by step. 

I named this blog One Step at a Time because sometimes, that's all I can do. One step. One fractional, inch of a step. 

Some days trusting The Lord comes naturally, and sometimes, I focus on the winds and the rains and waters and I begin sinking. When Peter sank, the Bible says that "Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught him." Immediately. 

Some days I feel like I'm sinking two days in a row. Or three. Or... a whole week..or month. I don't know.. somethings just feel... off. Where is the joy that is supposed to be so abundant and overflowing? Where is the peace? Where is the man walking on water who is coming to say, "Peace be Still." 
I find myself with the faith of the disciples some times. When I look out on the water I see a ghost. Jesus, my Lord and savior who I'd give my life to all over again.. just a vague silhouette on the horizon of  a great storm or windy, wavy, rough, unpredictable waters. 

When He seems like a ghost, it's really easy to look the other way. At the waves. At the rains. At the depth of the sea or the great odds that the boat is going to sink. 

I'm not one easily given to anxiety, but that isn't to say I'm not one given to anxiety. I am. Which mostly erupts in some sudden realization of how stressed or worried I am and then I just cry. I'll break down, cry a good hour or two..compose myself, sleep it off. And be calm for... who knows how long. It varies. 

I'm moved though. To a new city. New apartment. New streets, new neighborhood. Hopefully new friends. Hopefully new job. (A few things still in the coming.) 

Perhaps you'll remember that I have recently become obsessed with abandoned things. Houses and what-not. Cemeteries.. because those are abandoned bodies. I spend hours wondering after the lives that are no longer. Whatever they were, whatever they became. Whatever happened to make the soul leave the body. Whatever ever happened to the soul that left the body. I'm rather very curious. 

But I realized that part of the curiosity is stemmed from my own anxieties for myself. I'm easily given to believing false truths if I'm not careful to check it against God's word. So I'm easily given to slight notions of thinking *I* am abandoned. Or that I will be. 

I worry that I will abandon the life God had set for me and choose the wrong thing. And that the grand beautiful plans will sit desolate and alone.. much like the houses I find that are worn to the joists and covered in dust and aren't much more than an empty reminder that there once was life. Once upon a time. But the life has since left. 

When I walk through an abandoned house, picking out the living room or the kitchen or a bedroom, I wonder if the people who had lived there laughed. I wonder if they had been happy in that house. If happy things happened there. And I wonder myself if my life shall be happy. If it shall be marked by laughter and happy memories. Currently, yes. It has those things. Laughter and happiness. But if a house can have it and not, than probably my life, too, can have it and then not. 

As I wander in and among the countless gravestones of very young children and stillborn infants, I think about the life that never happened. God is in control of all things and I know there is no such thing as a child who shouldn't exist. But I wonder why they were here for so brief. And I worry that I shall never quite start my life. 

I feel like I haven't started my life. 

I'm like Repunzel in Tangled just, "Wondering and wondering and wondering and wondering 'when will my life begin?'" 

But the thing is. I'm not stuck. (I know that). I'm not held back. I'm nothing. I have all freedoms I could ever want or need. I'm just shy of a job. 

Perhaps its the lack of employment that makes me feel as though I have no current sense of purpose. 

I'm learning very quickly that it's not where I live that will make me happy, but what I live for. And how I live. And I'm bad at living. 

I'm bad at living with present purpose because I'm still hoping for a future fantasy. My little hopes treasured in jars of clay, waiting to be opened and lived. Sometimes I feel like I'm living. And sometimes I feel like I'm not. 

All in all, the Lord still whispers into my heart that He who began a good work in my will be faithful to complete it and carry it out until the day of Christ Jesus. But I'm rather an impatient person. 

I can just here my mother's words echoing in the background, "The goal is not the goal. It's the process to get there. Enjoy the process." 

Somedays I like the process, somedays I like the end point. 

I'm living in the future right now. I'm living for the day I get offered a job. I'm living for the day I will welcome my little brother home from the airport and be wrapped in one of his epic bear hugs. I'm living for this coming weekend with my older brother and a dear family friend. 

But I just wanna live. To be content. To be satisfied in the stillness. To be full in an empty house. 

That's all I want right now. My hands are open and my heart is hopeful.