Purposeful Pilgrim.

Two truths in literary form reverberate within me. One, a quote I read a long time ago. Right after coffee with a 'friend' who remarked with a helpless eye roll: "You're just a wanderer, Christina" and continued to derail me from anything that may have given my life purpose as she posed the numerous times I moved, switched jobs, or traveled in defense of her question "What are you up to now?" with her mind already answering the question -- that I couldn't be up to much - just aimlessly drifting through nothinghood, which apparently meant that the land of "nothinghood" couldn't ever amount to much in her settled opinion.

And that very week, God gave me this grip to reclaim me from her words:

"Not all those who wander are lost." J.R.R. Tolkien

So here I am again this week, feeling much of the same. Feeling helpless and hopeless and lost like driftwood at sea. It would take a lot more than a tidal wave to knock me down, for I have become strong in my standing and secure in my grasp, but each little ripple wave still has me finding sand under my footing.

In life, there are things that people look for as constant. As arrived, or achieved, or giving them a sense of steadiness. Family, Job, Finances, Home Address, Friendships - all are such things as these. But I am in this vacuum of space and time where all of these things matter, but are void of centrality at the same time.

I've been gobbling up this book Keeping Hope Alive by Lewis Smedes and digesting it like the bread bowl at Panera - sometimes soft and fluffy, other times crusty and crackled, but all the same, good. And in these days of looking for jobs, filling out apps, sending out letters... Of searching for houses, driving by condos, and muttering about apartments... Of conjugating wedding gifts, and formulating good-bye gifts, and bow-tying baby gifts.... I feel his words resonating:

"Contentment with discontent is what we call patience... Contented discontent is hope's patient impatience... Discontent is the way of the traveling life, and we are all born to travel; we are discontent until we get to where we hope to be, but as long as we have the hope of getting there, we can be content with the discontent of not being there yet." (p 11, 36)

They're good days. They're hard days. They're days of content. They're days of discontent. They're days of grasping for control. They're days of releasing to surrender. They're days of questions. They're days of rejoicing. They're days of strength. They're days of sorrow. These are the days of contented discontent. These are the days of a prodding traveler, a purposeful pilgrim.