Just popping in for a sporadic post here, and it has, as always, been longer than intended since the last one. For the best part of the months of July and August I was managing some home renovations, and attempting to do them without taking too much time off work meant that much of my spare time was given, of necessity, to the cause. Replacing flooring required moving out of a significant portion of my house, then back in again, which was a task.
I was looking forward to life returning to closer to normal and having some time for things other than wrangling with what seems to be excessive amounts of belongings, including thirty boxes of books, which even I now concede could be too many books. Life, though, had other plans and I had not long dealt with most of that upheaval and then just over a week ago I fractured my foot, breaking a bone for the first time in my life, which has been the debilitating nuisance that one would expect it to be.
I actually started writing this post after I a birthday I had recently, though even that is fast vanishing into the distance, and weeks have gone past since I started. A birthday often prompts a certain amount of reflection on the state of my life, and usually ends in being thoroughly depressing. I assess the status of the various spheres of home, relationships, job/career and find them all ‘weighed and wanting’ and so far from any dream I ever had that it gets overwhelmingly disappointing and then I feel decidedly ashamed of my self and my failures to realise any of them. Then I find myself reconsidering every decision ever made and the possibility that doing otherwise might have resulted in a different life, and I go rummaging through a pile of regrets that grows as I remember more of them, and rehashing all my mistakes. I ponder all the time and emotional energy and even money I wasted on men to whom it was meaningless, who did not value or appreciate it for what it was, or reciprocate any of it, and feel myself to be a grand fool and that there is not a hole deep enough to bury myself in. And I conclude that if someone had told me when I was sixteen that this was to be my life, I may well have jumped off something.
At yet after all that reflection is done, life is liveable now that I am here, and I am not unhappy, and I can muster up enough sense and awareness to feel that I should be (if not always am) grateful for what it is. I do not dislike my job (just the time it takes away from other pursuits), my house is cosy, now improved, and perfectly sufficient, if a little uninteresting, and I have come to accept my solitariness as the life that God has given me to live (“this is the assignment” as Elisabeth Elliot would say). And let us not forget my two beautiful cats, who bring me more laughs and company than ever would have thought to be possible.
There is a song we currently sing at church, with a bridge, or whatever it is supposed to be in modern worship music, that says “I will build my life upon your love, it is a firm foundation. I will put my trust in you alone, and I will not be shaken” and I am appreciating the truth of that more and more: that there is only one love that you can truly rely on and that is worth building a life on, and there is only one person you can trust if you do not wish to shaken and He, that being God in case that is opaque, is more that up for the task. Maybe that is the work of life - learning to let go of all else and lean into God being the source and end of all the dreams we ever had.
Maybe I am feeling all confessional because I have been reading the Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion, which a friend has loaned to me, and they are thoroughly delightful and bewitching. (I read three in eight days, while I was supposed to be dealing with my belongings.)
It’s amusing how we can think that changing external elements of our life will inspire new ways of living, like rearranging your house, but my home renovations have brought improvements and accessibility to various “craft supplies” and I am hoping to return to more regular creativity, whether it be writing or other means, which I am not even going to mention in case they don’t happen. First I just have to finish going through the crates of papers that came out of a filing cabinet, which have awakened procrastination (worst job ever). Wish me well!
The picture is forget-me-nots from my garden, which seemed apt to my sporadic posting.