When it is that quiet, the voices in your head tend to get louder and louder until they reach that crescendo of emotions that blur the lines of reality and make you wonder if you have been alone with your cat for just a smidgen too long. When this cycle starts, my first instinct is usually to grab the remote, but lately I have been testing my theory and letting the voices and thoughts swirl to a nice crescendo of anxiety and confusion. After all, if I don't, they will still be there in one, five, or ten years down the line after I have made some of the most important decisions of my life out of a place of denial rather than choice.
Unfortunately, I have done just this once or twice, and I still wince remembering the actions of non-action. Though it is easier to make a decision by not making a decision at all, it is the most difficult thing in the world to clean up the mess.
I continued to ponder this as I got up to go grab a bottle of wine from the corner liquor store. Now I know why Paul recommended Timothy have a glass a night.
I continued, still, to ponder these things as I spent 15 minutes looking at two bottles of wine, stuck in the stupor of my own inability to make a decision. It was as if the bottles themselves had joined the fray of choices already parading themselves through my slightly schizophrenic mind. After another five minutes, frustrated and mumbling something about the answers to my future being locked neither in the bottle of cab nor the pinot, I toss them both onto the counter and avoid the eyes of the store manager who's looking slightly concerned that I am talking to myself. Join the club...
Sitting back at home with glass in hand, the questions continue to swirl, with no answers, no pending responses from my hastily thrown prayers towards the ceiling.
So I return to my wine, letting the pinot linger just a touch. Aahhh, at least that was a good decision.
Finally in the menagerie of more thoughts than brains, a solid thought forms, both frightening and so real I can't ignore it:
Am I so scared to make to decision, any decision, and actually and work for what I want, that I make no decision at all?
Wow. Now I know why I bought that second bottle of wine...
All of this is so hard for me to admit, but something has clicked the more I think about it: what have I ever really worked for? What have I ever really thrown my heart and soul into, not being able to see the bottom? With no contingency plans, with no backups, with no excuses, what have I ever really fought for? And with that, what has ever been really worth it?
As I think of that, shame takes hold as I realize my continual bowing to fear and apathy as memory after memory floats through my mind.
All of this circles back around to the reason for my initial decent into my own thoughts; my future. That black void that looms large on the horizon. It's not that I fear the future, it's more that I can't keep putting it off. It's as thought I expect my dream job, dream mate, dream car to drop from the sky and to see Jesus standing there saying "Oh no, no need to thank me. I know, I am the best. Enjoy." And hey, why not? Christianity is supposed to be that easy, right?
The absurdity of not only the image, but the notion does not escape me, but in all reality, isn't that how I have been living my life? Either expecting things to just happen, or to be really confused when they don't turn out quite the way I wanted.
The truth is, when I get down to the bare essentials, the meaning of it all, only one thing comes to the top: in whatever I do, in where ever I go, I want it to come straight from the heart of Christ and to be in His will. To me, there is nothing without Him, so why pursue anything else?
Here's the question that immediately follows that nicely little wrapped cop-out: as I face the decisions that I have been conveniently ignoring, are Jesus and the decisions that I am making at odds, or partnered?
His perfect love has cast out my fear, so if that be the case, where do I still stand? I want what He wants for me, but where is the line between what He wants for me and what I want for me? Are the mutually exclusive, or are they one and the same? I can want to be a professional ice skater all I want, but I don't think that would be God's plan for me. I mean, I haven't seen ice in a decade, when the ice and I got in a fight, and it definitely won. I am still waiting for the intersection of my abilities and His dreams.
Now, if my life were a movie, this would be the moment in the story where I would enter into a 3-7 minute montage backed by inspiring music showing how I have found my meaning and purpose through an epiphany of some sort. I would walk tall, have a look of determination and accomplish a something impossible, like opening an orphanage in Somalia in 2.5 minutes. Then of course I would find my lost love again, ending credits would role and we would all walk out with a sense of completion and satisfaction.
Abruptly I realize I hate movies exactly for that reason. A story of inspiration can replace my need to find my own.
Here I sit, still in my living room, with a half glass of wine and still no neon signs. It is never that easy.
All I can do at this point is seek first the Kingdom... with all of my heart, with all of my fears, with abandon. I mean, at the end of the day, that's more real than the ground we walk on right?
(Cue the inspiring music)
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