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| Do you ever feel like you're wasting your life?
I'm sort of having a crisis of future at the moment.
It's a little attached to that conversation we had about the possibility of me going to Iran someday.
It's really late but I can't really sleep. We just finished watching Munich and I have so much rolling around in my head.
I want to do things. I want to take risks and go places and meet people and be where God wants me to be.
In Jeremiah the prophet talks about the word of God being like a fire shut up in his bones that he's tired of holding in. I feel a lot like that sometimes, and honestly I really feel like that when I start to think of my future, of the 9-5 and all the normal life stuff.
Are we pilgrims? Are we travelers? Are we birds who make nests but travel twice a year?
Honestly I don't know anything right now. But I know that I should be doing more.
How do I follow Him to Golgotha while the tyranny of urgent things are pressing down upon me? Is it all just a big mistake? How do you leave it all up to Him and in His hands?
Hello my name is Alison and I like details, specifics, analysis, thought, and reconsideration.
Just be. Just breathe. Just be still and know?
(but how?) | | |
| So. I've been a little stressed lately. If you've had to be on the receiving end of any of that stress...well...I apologize to you.
I was cleaning today and I found this quote that I wrote down sometime last year. I think it's a good reminder about relinquishing control to someone who's better at control my life than me anyways.
"All the time and energy I spend in keeping some kind of balance and preventing myself from being tipped over and drowning shows that my life is mostly a struggle for survival: not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle resulting from the mistaken idea that it is the world that defines me...as long as I remain 'hooked to the world'--trying, failing, and trying again. It is a world that fosters addictions because what it offers cannot satisfy the deepest craving of my heart."- Henri Nouwen.
I don't want to just survive.
"The enemy pursues me, he crushes me to the ground; he makes me dwell in darkness like those long dead.
I remember the days of long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.
I spread out my hands to you; for my soul thirsts for you like a parched land."
"I don't have to wait until all is well, but I can celebrate every little hint of the kingdom that is at hand...it is the joy of belonging to the household of God whose love is stronger than death and who enpowers us to be in the world while already belonging to the KINGDOM of JOY"
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| Might we? Could we? Should we? Will we? Won’t we? What if we had? What if hadn’t?
From every choice in our life sprouts these questions and so many more. From this “forest” of questions we are led into a dark freedom of choice that ultimately paralyzes us with the anxiety of having too many choices to choose from.
These choices are the freedom of the modern world. And these choices are our voluntary shackles.
We claim freedom of thought, we are pro-choice before pro-life, there is so often a looseness to everything that we never get around to making the choice that will define our lives in one direction or the other. Maybe this is our goal born from our fears. But even as our relationships become impossible because of the level of unlimited possibility, we sink into the frustration of superficiality. Living for two years in New York City, a microcosm of the modern world where the concentration of people seems to magnify the sins and successes of humanity, I’ve observed how this lifestyle of unlimited choices in which you can always change your job, or apartment, or significant other, eat at a new restaurant every night and worship at a new church every Sunday has led to a dread of commitment, lest we settle and lose our precious freedom.
As Os Guinness says in his “The Call”, “In our fragmented lives the one thing necessary is to ‘keep our options open.’ The art of ‘identity building’ is more a matter of fluidity than fixture. And since the rules of the game change as fast as the games themselves, we are taught to avoid above all being ‘stuck’ with commitments that might ‘mortgage’ the freedom of tomorrow”.
The unfortunate rub of all of this is that although the world continues to sell us choice, option, and transience, life forces us all to eventually make decisions. It’s been said that even the decision not to decide is a decision. So we’re at an impasse and the question must be begged: How the heck do I choose?
Due in part to the woman’s lib movement, I’ve been told about my possibilities since I was a little girl. The idea of being able to become whatever I want seems now, on the brink of beginning my actual life, overwhelming and in no way has prepared me to make the choices I will be forced to in the coming months.
I wonder, “Is there a meaning to this list of jumbled experiences, places, and people that make up my life. Is there a meaning to my story?”
T.S Eliot once asked: “Can a lifetime represent a single motive?”
In the modern era mobility is common. For the most part, traveling isn’t even a special reservation for the wealthy. But before the modern concept of having the whole world just a plane ticket away, there were still Nomads. Why did these people travel? What purpose drove them through the hardships of deserts, storms, and wars? Where they just searching endlessly, ambiguously, or did they have a greater purpose for their perceived wanderings?
Abraham traveled because he was called to. He left Ur of the Chaldees without knowing where he was going, with nothing but a promise. His descendants later continued after that promise as they followed the pillars of smoke and fire out of Egypt and into that endless desert. And for what reason were they given this promise? For Abraham it was his faith, for his descendents it was their chosenness. There was only decision they had to make: to respond to their chosenness or to not. After that one decision was made, all other choices flowed out of that which chose them, called them, and led them in the direction of the promise. But only through making that choice could they fully obtain the promise set before them.
Now, we all know that the Israelites aren’t exactly the perfect picture of a group of people who faithfully followed their call. There were times in the desert where they were hungry and complained. They often considered returning to servitude in Egypt. Moses questioned God, gave into the nagging people, and struck a rock. This just shows that the life of the called is not always smooth and simple; in fact “life may still bear the marks of desert trials, but the pillars of cloud and fire are there to guide and protect”.
Where would Israel be without this caller who both guides and protects? Probably, they would still be left in Egypt, possessing a history of just jumbled events, without an interesting story line.
In this famously post modern world of ambiguity where the journey is worth more than the destination, we are all looking to make our lives into a great story. The problem occurs when we become bogged down by all of our supposed freedom of choice and, paralyzed with anxiety, we miss choosing the only choice that really matters. The lesson of the story of Israel, of Abraham, and of so many other great stories is that to follow the call of Christ despite the uncertainty and chaos of modern circumstances is to make the great story line of your life.
It’s true that “modern life assaults us with an infinite range of things we could do, we would love to do, or some people tell us we should do. But we are not God and we are neither infinite or eternal”.
There’s “ultimately only one thing [that] can conquer choice—being chosen”. Being chosen reminds us of how small we really are and how much our little story is simply a part of a much larger saga. It gives us freedom to “rest in doing what we can” instead of trying to prove the worth of our individual chronicle to an unkind and unaccepting world.
Being chosen makes choosing simple. Whether it be in presidential elections, college or gradschool selections, choosing of your spouse, or whom to live with. Keep your eyes fixed on the smoke and the fire, follow the one who chooses and he will show you the next part of your story.
Inspired by Os Guinness’s “The Call”. Read it.
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| Finally, safe on a plane to Russia, I thought, “Ok, that was stupid and expensive, but it’s behind us now, I'll be home soon.” Wrong. Rule #2 of Traveling: When rebooking tickets with a Russian airline, pay for those tickets when you rebook them, never let them convince you to pay for them later. After a long night of not sleeping on a 10 hour flight, finally, we arrived in Moscow. Yay! All of our bags arrived with us. We got through passport control without any trouble. We even managed to change airports without any real drama. I thought, “Ok, great, my Russian isn’t so awful after not having used it for 2 months!” Then the trouble began. We went to check in. No, we’re too early. Come back in 4 hours. Ok…we’ll sit up in this random airport Café, eat way overpriced meat balls and drink overpriced tea. It’s all ok because by the evening we’ll be in Pyatigorsk. Four hours later we go to check in again. No, you don’t have the right paperwork. You need to go to this other desk and exchange this for real tickets. Ok. Other desk. Why does no one in this airport speak English? Ok. New tickets. Go to check in again. Stampy-stampy. Check our passports. Great! We made it through the first challenge. Now we’re finally at the check-in desk. Stampy-stampy. Tag our bags. No. You still have the wrong papers. No she does not know how to explain what we need to get. No she does not know English. Go back to that window. Ok…now we’re going backwards. It’s ok, it’s ok. She has our bags. We’ll be in Pyat soon. We probably just need to pay still for changing our tickets. Desk again. Same grumpy old woman. She doesn’t understand what we need either. Eventually she figures it out. “18,000 rubles,” she barks. “Shto?” “18,000 rublei.” “I don’t understand” “18,000” “Ya ni Panimayu. In New York they said that it would cost 1500 rubles a person. Why is it so much now?” “You missed your flight. You have to buy a new ticket. This is how much it costs.” (Did I mention that at this airport no one spoke English?) A few hours later, a few tears later we were able to whittle these people down to charging us 5000 rubles a piece for new tickets. Oh wait. You only have a credit card? Hold on. We don’t know how to charge credit cards. Ok. Missed that flight. Next option. Grab our bags. Grab a taxi. Drive 3 hours to the other side of the city and to another airport and airline that doesn’t suck. Get new tickets for the next morning. Check in. Eat more overpriced food (after about 12 hours of not eating anything). Find the only square of carpet in the terminal and pass out. Then, have the longest night of your life by waking every 15 minutes do the cold and hard floor. It’s all a recipe for success, really, and now a grand memory. ;) The next morning we made our flight (we were there very VERY early, so as to ensure that we didn’t miss it). We arrive in Pyatigorsk and fall asleep for a few hours. That afternoon we have to start orientation for the camp that begins in three days. We’re late, so there’s no jet-lag time. Oyes, and we’re going to start to move today too. Don’t bother unpacking. Sweeeeeeeeeeet. So that was, in fact, one of the worst and longest days of my young life. But looking back now there’s really so much I can be grateful for. For instance, it was a really amazing gift that I was able to speak and understand everything in Russian at the airport. Let’s face it, my Russian isn’t that good and I hadn’t spoken for months. I'm convinced that that was God who loosened my tongue and gave me the words I needed to speak. Also, I've now officially learned the lesson that when the airline says that I need to get to the airport 3 hours before my flight, they have their reasons…
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| It was a hot day in New York City. I was up late (or should I say early?) the night before, so I slept in a bit this morning. My bags were packed and I was more than ready to be out of that place. It’s not so much that I dislike New York or the United States in general, it’s just that it’s not my home right now, I'm tired of living out of a suitcase, and I miss having purpose to my life beyond trying to increase my pro-points in wii tennis. So that morning I woke up a little late, feeling excited to be on my way, packed up some remaining odds and ends, checked my tickets, discovered my computer wouldn’t turn on, and waited. Sometime later I woke Ryan up and helped him to get ready. It had been a hard couple of months on the both of us. Planning for the camp, preparing curriculum, exams, projects, fundraising, moving, had all worn us both down physically, mentally, and emotionally. It was time to be in another place. But first, to bank and Wendy’s to grab a bite to eat before the plane. Things were rushed. I'm not going to lie, we were running behind and should have left the house earlier, but still we thought we had left ourselves plenty of time to get to the airport. Jump in the old Cadillac. Mike, what a doll, is driving us to the airport. We hit the highway….and stop. Traffic. Great. We creep by for a long while and eventually make it to the airport. It’s going to be close, but we should make it. We say our goodbyes to Mike, grab a rolling cart, and get to the Delta line as quickly as we can get through the crowds of angry summer New York tourists and cranky airport personnel. We ask the line guard of sorts where we should go and she says reluctantly, “Oh, Moscow! I don’t know if we can still get you on, let me check”. Was anyone else aware that you have to check-in no less than two hours before an international flight due to FFA regulations? Ya…I wasn’t. Was anyone else also aware that airlines can move departure times earlier without telling you? Ya…I wasn’t. And did you know that when you miss your flight because you were unaware of the strict check-in rules and of the airline’s capabilities to move your flight you have to pay a whole lot of money to get a new flight? I think you get the idea. Needless to say, being 10 minutes late to check in cost Ryan and I a chunk of change and an extra night in the city. But that’s not the worst of it…we were supposed to make a connecting flight in Moscow the next day. So we rebooked for the next day at the same time and went to another terminal to talk to Aeroflot about changing our connecting flight to Min Vody. After moping around the airport for a while, running over our options of how we were going to get back to Ryan’s place, we hopped on the subway back to Manhattan. An hour and a half later, we were back in Harlem, hungry and exhausted. Yes I think before turning in for the night we must celebrate the day, eat Mexican food, and watch Arrested Development. The next day, we woke up on time, left the house early and got to the airport with plenty of time to check-in and even wander around the terminal for a while. But that wasn’t the end of our adventure…only the beginning… Rule #1 of Traveling: Never ever EVER miss a flight in Russia. | | |
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