Innate Struggle.

There is something innate with in me. It's the push in me. The desire to "achieve" to "live passion" to "drive forward." It escalates within me. It's this tense mulling that stops and goes like a unruly teenager grinding gas and breaks over speed bumps.

And I can't let it go. I wish I could. I wish I could just say, "ah, well... I'll just stay nannying another year and travel and enjoy it..." but instead I keep scourging for jobs and putting myself out there for hope and fight and disappointment. Like a bloody battle that this beat up warrior ceases to fight.

Push, push, push. Try, try, try. Agnst, agnst, agnst.

How do I either let it go, or, struggle well?

I tried. I submitted. I wanted a house. With all of me. Tears and finances and all of it galore. And cried over finding an apartment. With white walls and porches stacked. And signed a lease. Taking the "easy button" and hoping it would release the push in me. Instead, I just feel disappointed. Discouraged. Uneasy. Like something isn't right. I try to tell myself it will be fine. Or decorate the space in my head. But there is this thing in me that says it's not right... But neither were any houses I found, or my price limit, or the residential plots. And I can do nothing about the fact that shelter is a necessity in life. I can't just "pray it away" or leave it to rest... I had to do something. It's just that the something feels backward and not right.

In church today, Pastor Kallam introduced our new series "Struggling Well." He walked through Job, Simon Peter, and life, noting the contradictory ideals verses reality, examining too for us the life we have is often not the life we planned or dreamed... We want explanations for things, answer to the whys, fairness, and control. Yet, we can't control or manage life or God. But God is promised to be present in the struggle. Kallam defines struggling well with: engaging and wrestling with life believing that God himself is enough and the confusion and mystery of life point us to Christ who is our only hope.

Right now, in this, I can struggle well. I do, struggle well. Because I do wrestle with God (trust me, he's heard many a-word from me! Grrr!), and I do come to the point that in all this open handedness, in all this sacrifice, and surrender, no matter what... there is something in me that can not give Him up. Even if I wanted to. I keep coming back to the root of the fact that Everything Is Him.

But as I spread the monologue before me, I still can't hid away from the fact and wondering of this struggle. This presence of me. There are many who can ease through life, or not try so hard, or let be what is. But for some reason I can not. I am always trying for more. Aiming for better. Pushing the life out of me. Leaving me with dreams and desires and hope, which is good. But disappointment and discouragement... which is, well, not.

So here I am, this is me. Struggling well. But still wondering why I seem to "make" myself struggle.

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Blog Note: In all of this, I keep thinking I'm "Waiting for Perfect"... How do I know what is to wait for, what what I need to call "good enough"?

Just Want To Be Married.

I just want to be married. That's what all this is...

That's what the chasing after the wind... the trying to look for houses... the getting-by nannying, the searching for friendships and belonging and roots...

Really, if I'm honest, that's what it all comes down to. I just want to be married.

I want to be with him and love him forever. To buy houses with him. To cook and decorate for him. To watch our babies and grow older with him. To travel adventurously with him...

I know its not all wine and roses. But there, I faced it. I said it. I admitted it: I just want to be married.

She Believed In Me.

She believed in me. In everything about me. In everything I did. In every avenue I pursued. She believed in me.

I came home crying tonight. Because I want to buy this house. It's the perfect house - with space for bedrooms, the piano, a backyard with trees, a garden tub, a great kitchen, everything. It's perfect. I love the neighborhood. I love the location. I love the walk to the farmers market, the library, the coffee shop. I love everything about it.

But when I told people about it tonight, it was shut down. It was a constant berating of the neighborhood. A stereotype of people. A collage of remarks on skin color, economics, and the lines that are drawn from there.

And no matter what I said, no matter my attempts to convince them or even stuck up for myself, no one believed in me. And I just left, crying, and wanting my mom more than anything in the whole world, because she would believe in me. She would say if I bought the house that she would come. She would walk in with welcome home gifts, and picture flowers like a garden in the backyard. She would know I could do it, and want it and dream it for me. She would never even hesitate about it. Because if it is where I was, then it was what she saw in me.

Never in my life, can I think of a time where she questioned me, where she didn't support me, where she didn't believe in me. Whether it was third grade soccer, or elementary swim lessons. If it was piano or band or eighth grade basketball. If it was books or writing or boys. If it was prom committees or friendships or leadership. If it was flying to the other ends of the earth and living within walls of Filipino confines, barred by iron and glass-shattered-topped bricks. Or wandering alone in London and traipsing around Kenya with plenty of dangers lurking. Or teaching inner-city with guns, or moving to the inner-city of GR. She never once questioned me. She never once held back or stayed restrained of her support of me. She loved me. She believed in me. It wasn't a belief in trying to protect me, it was a belief in the strength of me, and everything that I was and who I was made to be. The world couldn't have big enough limits for what she knew of me.

I want her back. I want her back so bad it hurts. Straining hurts. Angering hurts.

Angering hurts for me and against her and against everyone at the table tonight. Because they don't believe in the strength of me. They don't know the things of my story. Of walking over dying children on the subway stairs in the Philippines. Or living in an old crack/whore house in Downtown GR and seeing a guy get beat up right outside my bedroom window. Or sitting there in a court room pew with a family who practically disowns you and a guy who is charged and taken to prison for killing your mother.

They don't know me. They don't love me in a way enough that wills me to work bigger than I am. That dreams dreams bigger for me than what I do.

My mom always said, "The safest place for you to be is in Gods will." It wouldn't have been her choice for me to go to Africa. To live on the Kenyan plane. To be like countless missionaries to risked (and do still) their lives for what God has called them to. But she believed in me enough to let me do it, and in God enough to trust him to carry me through it.

She believed in me. If she were present currently, she would do the same. She wouldn't set limits - she knew I could be the next CEO of World Vision, or mother of four, or Teacher of the Year, or Bestselling Author. None of these was too grand for what she could envision and release me to fly and soar to. But for some reason, everyone else sees me as this little white girl who stays in protected white bubble and should forever be. But this isn't me. It's never been me.

And she believed in me. Mom, I want you back to believe in me. But I also want your strength and my courage to be able to live, and fight against the grain, and climb like you believe in me.

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.

For Teaching.

Something changed in me. Just in this past week. From being flippant about teaching, and afraid of jobs, and overburdened by the search... to overjoyed, excited, and anticipatory. All of a sudden, I'm scanning websites, lurking for postings, and praying for openings. Something in me sparked once I left the school I applied at last week. It's back. A contagious, giddy, splurge of excitement... For high schoolers and middle schoolers, for proms and basketball games, for learning and libraries. For teaching.

Generation Gap.

I stand in a generation gap. I live in a generation gap. This portrait has stared at me for months now, but its recognition gives clearer image as circumstances mark the missing persons.

I am the one. Of four generations, I am the one generation that inhabits the earth.

My present life is a string with disconnected ends. My mother is in heaven, her mother too (she died when my mom was twenty-ish in a plane crash), and my daughter has yet to be. So I am in a generation gap. That is an odd, meaningless and meaningful reality.

Coming aside this cold fact, warmth harbors in my soul as I purposefully live for truth and hope. As I trace my lineage of women. As I grant them the highest of honors in my soul. As I sing them Proverbs 31 praises. And as I pull out my pieces of paper and a pen and endow my own daughter with my words and our lineage and create language of love. I sit here and unravel another Letters to my Daughter and gift her with thoughts and words and prayers and dreams to offer her, and what my hope glitters to be, like a windchime tinkling in the May breeze.

What Pleases The Lord.

"Live as children of the Light and find out what pleases the Lord."

Ephesians 5:9-10

As 'Children of the Light.' Wow. Heirs. Chosen. Covenanted. Claimed by him. Given an inheritance by him. Children of the Light. Bearing his name. It is His heritage then that is ours to claim and ours to live on through our children (Deuteronomy 6.) With this heritage, we are adopted and given a new last name and bear it. We walk as Light. With this knowledge and stamp impressed upon us, then it is our call and challenge to take ourselves as Light to illuminate Dark around us. Boasting proudly of what is Light: truth, righteousness, goodness, purity, joy, growth. What a lineage is that!

'And find out.' First, to discern the antonym: we are not lost, stray, wandering. No, we are letting him 'make straight our paths.' His Word promises to be a 'lamp unto our feet and light unto our path' (Proverbs 3:5-6.) So His Letter and the Holy Spirit within us guides and directs and casts light onto His Will. It is not dependent upon our ability to seek, search, or interpret. It is instead our faithfulness and obedience to His steps that continuously reveal it.

'What pleases the Lord.' This is the purpose of our days. To do what pleases the Lord. Release implications to grasp every opportunity or carpe diem or suck the marrow out of life. Rather, simplify. Pass inklings or thoughts through the simplest gauntlet of discernment: "Does this please the Lord?" and then commit to step boldly or quietly from there. Live may not be One Big Moment. It may be the simplest, small tasks that call us to be heroic (Stepping Heavenward, E. Prentiss, p. 67). But if we dedicate to living a life that pleases the Lord, then all seeking, striving, and straining can cease. For it is simply a call to be obedient and faithful to His chosen time. And in this, our days are also awarded a broad purpose, depth of meaning, and grandeur longevity.