Accepting Small Beginnings

There is an ache I believe in each of us to be known-truly known, accepted and delighted in. Today, I ran errands and felt like I didn’t REALLY connect to anyone. Yes, I said hello to the clerk at the grocery store and talked to a few strangers. But, it was wholly unsatisfying. What am I looking for that I am not getting? Do you all ever feel this way? Things seem to be okay but there is a deeper aching for more. On a different note, I was thinking about contentment the other day and wondering how to be content.

For me personally, I am a dreamer and if I’m being honest – there is some pleasure in the unknown. I have been in a huge transition time the past few months and one of my biggest goals has been to get settled back in Indiana and to get connected. Is it weird, then, that as I get more connected a sadness emerges? There is something about the hunt for things, the pursuit that can be exhilarating for me. Before I get a job, I can imagine all the wonderful possible jobs I could get. Prior to getting married, there was often a sense of adventure as to who I would meet and when life would come together. I have felt that way since I moved back to Indiana about location and place as well. I can research and dream of all the possible interesting places I could live and what I could do there. I would say that I am a visionary in the sense that I can envision many things very clearly almost to the point of “living” that particular path in my imagination. I also can do that sometimes for others. There is some gifting and strength in that for me.

The drawback is that I’m so busy “living” all these other lives that it takes me a while to truly settle in to the here and now. Maybe there is some self-protection or defense for me in that- especially because I’ve been through some challenging changes this past year– uprooting from Washington state and planting in the familiar (where I grew up) and unfamiliar (everything has changed) Indiana. Not to mention going through a divorce and grief about what was and wondering about what will be.

So, I’m saying this to you all and to myself – sometimes, grieving is really vital to being in the moment. Today, I was sad off and on as I walked through Trader Joe’s in Indianapolis remembering going to Trader Joe’s in Seattle with a very good friend of mine and laughing with her. I was also sad this week going to various appointments and realizing that practitioners I go to here don’t know me- I don’t have a history with any of them. Who really knows me here? Do I matter? Building a community takes time- I know this but it also brings up some pain.

Even though it’s been nine months since I moved back to Indiana, I still have to use google maps because I don’t fully know my way around Indianapolis. In fact, today, I was trying to find Goodwill in Carmel and I asked a woman and she said, “Oh, its right over there”-literally right behind me! But, I didn’t know. On a side note, why are there so many round-a-bouts in Carmel?

There are small moments of recognition that this is still not my home in the sense that I’m newly re-planted here and my community is beginning but it isn’t fully formed- like a flower bud that is present but not yet opened.

As my life here takes shape, new pangs of grief call for my attention. For example, I got a job, y’all. I’m going to be a Mental Health Therapist for a community mental health practice and I start on Monday. Cool, huh? It really is- but the truth is, I anticipate as I begin this position, I will have moments of remembering how much I loved my last job at Western Washington University in Washington and how my co-workers loved me and thought I was so funny and how I adored them. Sigh. The thing about change is – even when good things happen – there can be reminders of the loss of what was before. The best way I know how to deal with this is to breathe through it and accept these feelings. It doesn’t at all invalidate the excitement of the new things.

It is in actually moving forward that I begin to fully process what I have left behind – good and bad. And, we all have beautiful, sad, courageous, quirky stories to tell – not just me.

So, I will end with a quote from Bill Johnson from the book, “Strengthen Yourself in the Lord,” pg 145

“If we don’t set our hearts on the end goal, we will despise the day of small beginnings. We also won’t be able to recognize how far we’ve come from those beginnings. We have to learn to sustain deep gratitude for what God has done in our past while keeping our eyes fixed on the possibilities that are ever before us until the Kingdom comes in its fullness.”

Amen to that. Please let me know if you can relate to any of these feelings as you go through your own life story.