It's a rainy night in Chicago, a city where the temperamental, ever-changing weather never ceases to surprise me. (The weather forecast is predicting a high of 61 in two days, followed a few days later by a high of 16. Seriously?!)
This weekend has moved slowly and uneventfully, thanks to unexpectedly falling ill on Friday. I cleared my schedule for the weekend and suddenly found that I had time to sit and process life for a while. Tonight's wildly divergent weather is fitting for where my mind has traveled over the last few days.
I find myself starting my second year of grad school, plowing ahead with my degrees in God school and business school. I find myself in a city that is far from where I grew up (far in many ways - geographically, culturally, etc.). I find myself in a community that is both life-giving and constraining, supportive yet transitory. I find myself in a different time zone than the rest of my immediate family, who are scattered through the other three zones. I find myself in a long-distance relationship with a good friend of mine, a relationship that both gives and takes, strengthens me yet exposes my weaknesses. I find myself in an internship that challenges me to put lots of effort into living out and working out values, ideas, and passions I have held for so long in my head and my heart; the experience has been both exciting and exhausting.
Life and all the things/people/experiences I have been gifted with at this moment in time is filled with its contradictions and its struggles, its great joys and its tests of endurance and patience.
The excitement, novelty, and variety of my first year of life here at North Park and in the city of Chicago have largely - though not fully - worn off as I settle into my second year here. I'm moving more decisively into the rooted, grounded stage in this community. This phase is always tricky for me. Feeling inspired in the mundane, routine parts of life can be incredibly difficult for me. I tend to become anxious, restless, dissatisfied, and escapist. Cultivating growth and depth in my life here can even seem futile when I'm most likely leaving in a year.. but what's the alternative? Surface-level, shallow living repels me for many reasons, mostly because I know God has called me so much more than that.
I think what I've been struggling to grasp as I move into this rooted, grounded stage of my life here is the art of holding all these gifts loosely in my hands. God has given me a lot of good things, good opportunities, and new challenges to work through. The hardest part is trying to negotiate how much I invest in and hold onto these things, these gifts, these chances, while still remembering that all things in life are ultimately temporary. That's especially relevant here and now, when I'm only in this community and place for another year.
I also need to remind myself that when life gets difficult, painful, and complicated, I can't just automatically look for the escape hatch and bail on the circumstances God has led me to. There are times when it's best to leave, quit, or give up because things have become too unhealthy, too unbalanced, too demanding to go on. But in a lot of cases, the 'easiest' path isn't the one God wants us to gravitate towards. There's a lot to be said for the endurance, perseverance, and refinement we can gain through pressing on when things get tough or even when life seems too predictable and routine.
The main challenge for me is cultivating the kind of wisdom and discernment to know when I push forward, when I let go, or when I just go with the flow and let life take me where it's heading. It helps when I remember who I'm striving to be like. God is faithful, wise, and knows how to weigh hearts, motives, and perspectives. He looks beneath the surface of the present into the depths of the past and the possibilities of the future. He puts his whole heart into everything he creates and loves, yet still maintains the ability to go on when He's rejected or faces obstacles in the world. He knows himself so thoroughly and completely that He cannot be deceived or misled by how things appear.
In contrast to that, I feel like I sway in the breeze, flitting back and forth between seeking stability and freedom (depending on what's more convenient at the moment). I get caught up in how things appear to be and want short-term solutions and answers to long-term problems or challenges.
Thankfully, I've chosen not to have to sort life out on my own. It's hard learning how to hold on to all these gifts and circumstances loosely - giving God the space to move into them and teach me, while still taking responsibility for what I do in all these situations. Yet I serve a God who's seeking me out, who promises to help me navigate through these challenges and provide everything I need along the way.
I'll end this with a promise God makes to his people, one that leaves me with hope for whatever life brings me in this stage of the adventure and the next: "For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands" (Isaiah 55). When we live faithfully - even though it gets messy, ugly, dull, or complicated at times - God can reap such amazing things from our lives if we hold onto things loosely and leave room for his Spirit to work through them.
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