I’m trying to figure out how so many people I know do a full time gig while entertaining their passion business on the side. Within the in-betweens of their already swarming beehive of a life. Maybe it’s just me in my weakness, but I really don’t like living an unhealthy life because of the need to fill my life with aspirations and money. I really want to do this thing in a way that I can say to my grandchildren some day, “I went for the real thing. I didn’t compromise where it counts.” I want them to see me for a failing human, who took risks, and gave into the mystery that is life. That’s a scary thought though, to trust in the unknown. That’s a world where I say: “God dictates my steps. Not society.”
I see it often.. I hear it often even more. We fill fill fill fill fill our lives with pastimes instead of silence, because God forbid we grieve the silence. Women become girl bosses because they cannot or choose not to have children or choose to be super busy while being full time moms in order to prove they can have it all. Men climb to the tippy top of the food chain in order to seem strong. The passion of isolation is one of the only places we truly get to learn what it is to be like Christ, to understand even an ounce of what He put himself through. There is grace in surrender. There is grace in sacrifice. There is grace in giving up things. Jesus let people murder him.. He is God. He chose to leave earth because He knew there was a better way. In the garden you saw how much He didn’t want to.
If you can evaluate your life right now, would you say that you have cultivated a forest of greed or of gratitude? Many of us have these huge taped together over-malfunctioning- but-clean-but-shiny- gardens of greed. Greed, like lust, is not always connected to money. Greed is the wanting of more. Always more, more, more. It’s the enemy of gratitude. It’s the opposite of grace. In fact it refuses to let grace take over, because grace can only be realized when we surrender into knowing that we cannot do this life apart from Christ. Greed actually leads to lust. Lust is the specified greed in our life. You can lust after someones body, but you can also lust after how they live their life.
Again, when I write it’s from a place of contemplation in my own life, where Christ is moving and changing me. For the past couple of months I knew He was stirring in my heart to quit the beloved cafe I had been a part of since the first day it opened. I had found a sense of security in keeping busy every Friday and Saturday night with a schedule. By keeping myself busy within a setting I could logically tell myself that I’m making money because I need it in order to keep going, but I was very subtly avoiding the fact that I just didn’t want to feel rejected when no one asked me to do something on the weekends. I didn’t want to deal with the space that I knew I needed from the world, in order to delight in God. To delight in Him more than my wounds that I’ve learned to shine up and make into something that someone would see and want in their own life. I even need to take responsibility for making people lust after my successfully busy life. It’s weird to know that we can create lust for others through our own greed come to reality; when we do get what we want and the way that we allow ourselves to spin it to others.
God knew what it was like to feel rejected. I mean hey, don’t we all reject Him at least once a day in our lives? The guy is the King of Rejection. Because He knew this feeling, this hopelessness, this pain, He created the commandments; or the Law. It was all created so that we wouldn’t feel the sting of say someone cheating on us, or someone taking something of ours that was not theirs to take in the first place. By following these commandments we learn the Beatitudes, the blessings and the beauty of life amongst the pain what was opened up from the moment we chose against our Maker. The bible I’m learning is an open translation, a conversation, and it is also a process. Its this great encyclopedia from logic to love. And isn’t that just life? We start with what we know and stay for what we don’t.
I’m learning to surrender wholeheartedly into the silence. In this I am asking more questions than I ever have before, without desolation when the answer does not reach me right away. I found my calling as a painter, more so stumbled into it with practice, but it’s the road I’m on now. Now is the part where I give room to listen. Now is the part I stop clinging so closely to the fear of rejection and I move on from it. And I’m in that process of transition. Who knows what I’ll be up to on the weekends now, but luckily I know it will be more on track with where He needs me to be and go, and there is so much freedom within His boundaries and obedience.
