Have you ever had a plan? Not necessarily a plan for a day, but a longterm, semester type of plan, or maybe even a plan for a year? You set a goal, something you will have achieved by the end of the year, and you don't expect it not to happen. It's a plan. It's set in stone, it's imminent. And it's good. Generally the plans we make for ourselves our good, right?
So what do you do when that plan can no longer happen? When something comes out of the blue and broadsides you? Something you didn't expect, didn't plan for, and it's too big to just overlook, or sweep under the rug? What do you do? When the plan for the semester, for the year, is forced to change? What do you do when you look at where you are in life, at what has just happened to you that's so huge that now life has to change in some way, somehow, and you don't really know what that's going to look like? Do you get overwhelmed, over-anxious, to the point where you can't do anything? You're stuck. And it's not that you want to be stuck, you want to move, to do something, to live life, but you don't know how. How do you change that? Do you just wake up one morning and an idea hits you as you get out of bed? Suddenly you know how to dress, you know what you want to go after, to pursuse, to desire, and you're finally able to follow through. Is that what happens? Or does it have to be more forced? Is it something you have to force yourself to do? Do you have to wake up every morning, the end nowhere in sight, and make a temporary plan for your life, for the semester, the month, the day even, just so long as there's something, some sense of some accomplishment?
Or is it a balance of the two? After weeks of forcing yourself to get up, do laundry when needed, grocery shop, make food, etc... then will there eventually be the day when you wake up and you just know? When you finally have a desire to do a specific something, instead of just desiring? When you know what the day holds? When you know where to work, when you desire to be there? Does that time ever come? Forced or not, does it ever come? Is there any light at the end of the tunnel? Is there ever a time when you don't have to question anything at all, when you can live the life that is set before you and no longer ask any of the "what if's?" or "whys?" that you have been asking every day for so long... does that time ever come?
Is there something to look forward to? Or will there always be this feeling that there's something better, something to be desired, but that that something can never quite be grasped?
I want to be the best possible version of myself. And I know that means immitating Christ, and living every day to glorify Him. But what does that look like? I feel like I can study it every day for a lifetime and still not have the answer to that question. When life hands you lemons, you're supposed to make lemonade. But what if the events in life are just too sour, nothing good can really be made out of them, except for now you know to not use those lemons, to not go about harvesting lemons in the future like you did those. Does that make any sense? I guess what I'm trying to say is that, sometimes there are events in life, which just hit too hard. Which knock you down flat on your face, they knock the breath right out of you, and leave you bruised and crippled, broken on the side of the road. You feel like you're dying.. and it's not necessarily that you want to die, it's just that's what you expect the end of life to look like... So how do you keep living, when you feel like you're dying? When you want to get out of your house everyday, but you still want to be by yourself, because you're not strong enough yet to defend yourself once again from the world. It's too hard, too frightening, to step outside your front door... and yet you want to...
I used to have a place where I could go when life threw me a hard event. I love being able to have time to myself. Time in which no other person can even be seen, much less heard. Here, where I am now, I can't have that unless I'm in my bedroom... and I think all of us know that if we stay locked in a small room for too long, depression is imminent. But see, I used to have a place, a whole mountain actually, to escape to. The mountain has healing powers for the heart. I would go there broken and bruised, I would cry my heart out to the Lord while sitting on His mountain, and I would let Him, through His creation, mend my brokeness. He would put the pieces of my heart back together, gently, tenderly, slowly, and then the healing process would begin. And by the time I got back to my house, I wouldn't mind so much being around large groups of people, I had had precious time to myself, time in which I the depression and pain life had tried to strangle me with, had been lifted from me. My heart was lighter, and it was being healed.
It's so much easier to step outside when you can still hide away even while out of doors. It's so much harder in a big city. Escape isn't so easily found. And yes there are bike trails, and places to go hiking, or boating here, but all of those places people will be seen and heard, and getting to those places isn't easy on top of that. So that method of healing, at least for now, while I'm here, isn't too realistic.
I was once told that the best things in life were often the hardest things in life, but that just meant that they were worth fighting and suffering for. I hope that means that through this suffering and pain which my heart is having to go through right now, a best thing is about to happen. I hope. But I do not know. Uncertainty is a blessing, and a curse. It's something we love in some situations, but it's mostly something we cringe at. When someone tells you that they can't really say whether or not something did or didn't happen, it's crushing and discouraging to say the least. You want a 'yes' or a 'no' not a 'maybe.' We didn't even like 'maybes' when we were kids, if your mother told you 'maybe' it just meant she didn't feel like saying 'no' and arguing with you about it right then... and we all knew that.
It's harder still when we get 'maybes' in life, as adults. Will this get better? "Maybe." Will there be a good period, a time of blessing and happiness, and just enjoyment now that there has been this awful time? "Maybe." So does that mean it will get even worse? "Maybe." There's never a definite. "Yes, you will have an amazing time of prosperity now in your life." or "No, it's going to be very hard for quite some time yet to come, and it may never be as good as you want it to be."
So do you we still make plans for ourselves, and for life, even after we've been knocked out cold. Do we still get up in the morning and plan. And if we do, do we plan for life to be good, for that day, that week, that month, that semester, that year, to be good? Or do we hesitate? Do we instead make plans of uncertainty, planning on something else to happen, to knock us down once more? Or do we go back to the outlook of life we once had, and plan on life to be good, to always be good? Or do we not plan at all?
Do we add a "maybe" to the plan, and make it so it could go one way or the other, plan on uncertainty, pain, trials and tribulation, but at the same time hope that they will not occur? Or do we plan to have hope? Do we plan to live life, no matter what? And then do we strive to figure out what that looks like exactly? And then, how do we figure out what that looks, while at the same time living it?
And then of course there's the matter of dreaming dreams for yourself once more... Of not being fearful to say, one day, hopefully even soon, I want to be doing this... I believe this would give me a sense of accomplishment... This is what I desire to do, and even more than that, I'm not afraid to do it. Wouldn't that be an amazing blessing in and of itself? To finally be able to dream once more? I hope that time comes. The time in which I again find myself desiring and dreaming for my future. I hope that time comes soon. Because I desire to desire. I desire to dream. I desire to have dreams for myself. And I desire to not live other peoples' dreams for me, but to let God give me dreams for life, for Him to help me dream, because if I'm dreaming His dreams for me, then they'll happen, won't they?
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