What's going on

What follows is a set of realizations that, while not particularly groundbreaking or original, have nonetheless been increasingly impressed upon me. Wisdom demands experience, but it is in experiencing naivety and discomfort that the whole process becomes humbling. I feel like the past year or so has been one of repeated ideas, spinning wheels and hearing echoes of many conversations all too similar in nature. After having said much without saying much, I suppose I should just get on with it.

Part of me wishes growing up felt familiar, as impossible as that would be. I keep conceptualizing my experience as different or unique, looking for patterns to which I cannot conform and using them as an excuse for not feeling sure of myself. I am a Christian, but I didn't grow up with the typical Christian experience. I am a teacher, but my path to the classroom is nothing like I could have planned or imagined. I am a pastor, but  uncertain of the boundaries of what that word means in the context of my role in the lives of my students. I am in a community, but completely unsure of the structures that lie therein, my role within the group, or the natural lifespan of such a complex entity. I wish it all felt familiar or that there was some way to relate my experience to what I see myself surrounded by. Leah and I just watched an episode of brain games that discussed social conformity and I paradoxically feel a yearning to relate to those around me while at the same time not wanting to fit in to patterns of expected or predicable behavior. What a foolish crisis.

One particularly impactful seminar during my teacher education encouraged us to recognize the feeling of discomfort we will be confronted with in our practice and not to ignore it or to try and fix it but rather to try to become comfortable with it. While it is something that has resonated with me throughout my time spent in an underfunded educational system, it isn't something I've been able to apply to my life in a meaningful way beyond the realm of education. How do I feel comfortable with issues bigger than myself? Is it complacency to accept things I feel I have little power to change, or should I be seeking to bring about positive change? If I do, and I am operating in areas completely new to me, how do I take a first step with wisdom and confidence?

I know the simple Sunday school answer is to trust God. To allow Him to lead my steps. To lean into Him for direction and comfort. Is this answer unpalatable merely because it is simple? Is it my own cynicism that prevents me from accessing this wisdom? I suppose I feel a great need for human direction, for someone speaking into my life from a position of authority or experience. There is only far one can go with these endless rhetorical questions before they become a meaningless chattered echoing and reverberating into nothingness.

To prevent an overwhelming negativity from being cast on this update, I will mention that just the process of thinking through these issues and identifying them helps to ease the burden a little bit. I may not know the answers, but there is comfort to be felt in identifying the questions and to be in pursuit of solutions. I feel there are many questions looming over my head regarding the next few steps in life. Perhaps such a feeling is inevitable and healthy, and that the goal shouldn't be seeking to feel as certain about the next few steps as I should wish to feel certain about the steps I'm already taking. Life can feel so overwhelming when we deal with it in its entirety, but in the minutia of each day's worries I feel it is much easier to cast my worries and concerns on God.

All of this to say very little definitively, life is in process and I'm trying to keep up without either becoming numb to the daily details or being paralyzed by the many decisions looming on the horizon. Thanks for reading and journeying with me, how are you?