But What If...

What if we're fine?

What if this is the point, right now?

My boy harvesting raspberries with the sons of my yoga teacher, my daughter working on the boat with my husband, my tea hot and my novel engaging. Our home open, home to some young kid on his way to his own 20something life exploring in that same inlet that has brought so much life to our own crew.

What if this is all that's required for now? If the next thing will come when the next thing is due, and we're fine until then?

I'm not convinced really. I don't see anything else to do but enjoy this moment, but I'm not convinced I shouldn't be looking harder.

And another thing... (double-posting because I'm double-fucked)

We have a just-right sized house in a community full of people we care for.

We both have jobs that are fine. We do not always spend our days doing what we are built for, but we are paid enough to keep our home and feed each other, and live generously with our friends and neighbours.

We have most of our family within a five-minute drive and then a few more half-an-hour away and the other two just six hours away.

We do not have a lot of clarity about what the point is right now. The vision and mission part - that's what is missing.

We are low on community these days, more now than we have been in a long time.

What is so wrong exactly?

It's that part where we don't have a point.

For the first few years the point was trying to get pregnant, trying to become a family. Then the point was trying to keep those babies alive and just get through. Then the point was helping Joanne die. then the point was getting Scott back on a fire truck.

But now there's no point.

I worry if we don't come up with a point soon, we'll be given a new one. A new terrible one like more dying parents or joblessness. Or worse.

To love God and worship God forever. That's supposed to be the Grand Point of It All, but I think I'm looking for something a bit more specific.

Love God and love your neighbours. And who is your neighbour? Whoever you come across who needs what it is you have to give. That's my own personal point, my grand guiding mission and vision. Can it be all of ours?

So then the work is to just keep journeying with eyes open for those who need what it is we have to give. And to be maybe be sure to be living in what it is we have to give so that it's easy to be giving it away.

And what is it then that we have to give, our little foursome? Maybe that's what needs to be lingered on next?

No exorcism today.  Maybe tomorrow.

Timing

Timing is the one thing that we often forget to surrender to.

Things are dark until they’re not. Most of our unhappiness stems from the belief that our lives should be different than they are. We believe we have control — and our self-loathing and self-hatred comes from this idea that we should be able to change our circumstances, that we should be richer or hotter or better or happier. While self-responsibility is empowering, it can often lead to this resentment and bitterness that none of us need to be holding within us. We have to put in our best efforts and then give ourselves permission to let whatever happens to happen—and to not feel so directly and vulnerably tied to outcomes. Opportunities often don’t show up in the way we think they will.

You don’t need more motivation or inspiration to create the life you want. You need less shame around the idea that you’re not doing your best. You need to stop listening to people who are in vastly different life circumstances and life stages than you tell you that you’re just not doing or being enough. You need to let timing do what it needs to do. You need to see lessons where you see barriers. You need to understand that what’s right now becomes inspiration later. You need to see that wherever you are now is what becomes your identity later.

From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamie-varon/to-anyone-who-thinks-theyre-falling-behind_b_9190758.html

I am trying to make sense of the above. Or maybe make peace with it.

I am so profoundly unhappy I can't see straight. I am seconds away from being completely undone by the story that my life has been a series of terrible mistakes.

Except of course as soon as I type that, I know it's not true. It's really just the last 4 years I really haven't liked. The last four years where it felt like a lot of big things got taken out of our hands. The last four years where the illusion that we were making choices was finally shown for what it is - just make-believe. 

I thought we'd get to choose more. But I mostly know that life chooses us. The journey through our 20s and 30s is a journey toward realizing that we've chosen very little - maybe the knobs on the cabinets in a house that was built long before we showed up. The foundation, the size, the number of rooms of our House Life: all those were not choices at all, though it was fun to pretend I suppose. 

I know all this, have known it for years, and yet. And yet.

I am ready to choose something. I want to move a wall or build a new wing. I want to pack up the whole thing and move it a few (hundred) miles down the road. But so far, life is not yielding to my plans and appears resolute in limiting my options to moving the pictures around, or maybe bringing in a houseplant. 

There were a lot of loud voices in my life telling us we got to choose, and that in fact every moment was an opportunity to Choose Wisely. That the Wrong Choice could wreck everything and before we knew it, we'd be walking with the devil straight to eternal terrible. It's odd to me that I've rejected that entire theology so entirely and yet, am absolutely managed by it in this current storm. I can not shake the belief that at some point in the last 48 months, we disobeyed, chose the wrong thing and are perilously close to being lost forever.  I am certain that we are supposed to be doing something altogether other than what we're doing and that the reason I don't know what it is is because of sin, because I'm not listening, because of Something I've Done.

Sigh. The certainly is so small, but SO LOUD. What curses we have been fed, dressed up as blessings. 

Maybe we need an exorcism...