Finishing well. This is something I've been pestered about for a good 10 years, and I'm really not THAT old, so the concept of ending well and transition is something I've had hammered into me for a good portion of my life. Still, I don't do it very well. I'm not really sure that anyone does, so I guess I can have grace with myself. And yet, I wish I did it better. I remember back in my senior year of high school I would just sleep ALL the time. Seriously, unless I was running around being active, I was probably asleep. It was easier to sleep through the idea of leaving my friends, family, and home than it was to be awake and face it.
Last year I graduated from college, and though that was a painful time of saying goodbye to my closest friends of the past four years, in a lot of ways it was not an ending for me. I did not move, I kept going to the same school, and there was not that feeling of facing the unknown. Now, a year later, I'm in a very different place. I'm excited for the future, I really am. I'm excited to be closer to my family, to start a career, and to move on with my life (sorry Azusa, but I'm ready). And yet there is this nagging feeling that it would be so much easier to not move on. I could have stayed in the same house with most of the same roommates, I could have kept my job or even had a full time job (I've had a couple of offers in Azusa), I could have stayed close to the friends I have left in the area. All of that would have been safe, but it wouldn't have been really living. Right now I'm just biding time, waiting for the next adventure, and I don't want to live my life that way! I want to LIVE the adventure. I want to live in true community with those around me (even if it IS my parents). I want to take chances on applying for jobs that I get rejected for. I want to depend on someone else to take care of me when I can't provide for myself. I WANT to be vulnerable. But that doesn't mean the transition is easy. I hear myself being impatient, sarcastic, and downright rude to the people around me who I love. Is that my way of making it easier to say goodbye? I want to excel in my last quarter of my Masters program, and yet each day I have to force myself to do my homework and learn something new (Is this blog a procrastination technique? Probably!). I can't wait to not have homework anymore, and yet I know in two months I'll be wishing I had some!
The end is hard. Some people do it well, but I still haven't figured it out. I guess that's one more thing to add to my list of ways I need God to work in my life. For today I 'll rest in the knowledge that He IS faithful and that at the end of it all I will have made it through by His grace. I just hope I don't lose too many friends or opportunities to truly live on the way :)
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
We Are Fragile
Life is fragile. Humans are not strong on our own. A popular verse says that three chords are not easily severed. It's all true. When I am on my own, without a community of loving people around me, I break easily. Even with a support network, I am weak. I fail so often. I try to be 'good,' but I just can't make the cut. I'm not really down on myself, I mean we are all that way to an extent. Some of us have different struggles than others, but we all have struggles, and we all carry baggage. My world can start crumbling around me for a thousand little reasons, and I'm guessing yours can too. Sometimes it's a broken romantic attachment, sometimes it's a long time friendship that just isn't the same anymore, sometimes it's trusting someone and finding out they can't be trusted, often it's just being left behind by those we love, and more often still it is something seemingly inconsequential (like a bad grade on a paper). Whatever the reason, it's easy for my world to come tumbling down around me.
Lately I've been reading a lot of books about the hard realities of life and the chaos that humans can bring to the world around them. I just recently read both The Kite Runner and The Giver trilogy. The first of these is about Kabul, Afghanistan, and a rich kid's story of the hurt he inflicted and the consequences of it (that's the very simplified version, you should read it for yourself if you haven't!). The Giver trilogy seems like it has nothing in common with The Kite Runner, since it is a futuristic distopian series, but I found many of the same themes running through these very different books: the potential of humanity to do harm to one another and the world around them, the fragility of humanity, and the incomprehensible capacity for love, doing right, and fighting back that we humans carry with us. The truth is that there are consequences to our actions. A boy may do one small act as a child that stays with and torments him for the rest of his life. A society may remove all pain from their citizens in order to give them a better life, but there will be consequences to this as well. The consequences of our actions are often simply living less 'human' lives, which in my opinion is simply living farther from the image of God who created us to be like him.
I didn't post this to come to any conclusions, simply to share the things I am working through. There is pain in this world. I am easily hurt, even if you may think that I am tough (and the same is probably true of you). There is also HOPE. God created us to be a race who needs each other and him, but also who is resilient and full of his goodness. Below, are the lyrics to a song I love. It's a country song, so you may not love it equally, and it's simple, but I think there is something profound in these lyrics. We all carry baggage, we are fragile, we are shaped by what we come in contact with, and we all have good and bad sides to us. Life is a journey full of shaping one another, picking up each other's broken pieces, and finding wholeness in the end.
"Glass"
Lately I've been reading a lot of books about the hard realities of life and the chaos that humans can bring to the world around them. I just recently read both The Kite Runner and The Giver trilogy. The first of these is about Kabul, Afghanistan, and a rich kid's story of the hurt he inflicted and the consequences of it (that's the very simplified version, you should read it for yourself if you haven't!). The Giver trilogy seems like it has nothing in common with The Kite Runner, since it is a futuristic distopian series, but I found many of the same themes running through these very different books: the potential of humanity to do harm to one another and the world around them, the fragility of humanity, and the incomprehensible capacity for love, doing right, and fighting back that we humans carry with us. The truth is that there are consequences to our actions. A boy may do one small act as a child that stays with and torments him for the rest of his life. A society may remove all pain from their citizens in order to give them a better life, but there will be consequences to this as well. The consequences of our actions are often simply living less 'human' lives, which in my opinion is simply living farther from the image of God who created us to be like him.
I didn't post this to come to any conclusions, simply to share the things I am working through. There is pain in this world. I am easily hurt, even if you may think that I am tough (and the same is probably true of you). There is also HOPE. God created us to be a race who needs each other and him, but also who is resilient and full of his goodness. Below, are the lyrics to a song I love. It's a country song, so you may not love it equally, and it's simple, but I think there is something profound in these lyrics. We all carry baggage, we are fragile, we are shaped by what we come in contact with, and we all have good and bad sides to us. Life is a journey full of shaping one another, picking up each other's broken pieces, and finding wholeness in the end.
"Glass"
Trying to live and love,
With a heart that can't be broken,
Is like trying to see the light with eyes that can't be opened.
Yeah, we both carry baggage,
We picked up on our way, so if you love me do it gently,
And I will do the same.
We may shine, we may shatter,
We may be picking up the pieces here on after,
We are fragile, we are human,
We are shaped by the light we let through us,
We break fast, cause we are glass.
Cause we are glass.
I'll let you look inside me, through the stains and through the cracks,
And in the darkness of this moment,
You see the good and bad.
But try not to judge me, 'cause we've walked down different paths,
But it brought us here together, so I won't take that back.
We may shine, we may shatter,
We may be picking up the pieces here on after,
We are fragile, we are human,
We are shaped by the light we let through us,
We break fast, cause we are glass.
We might be oil and water, this could be a big mistake,
We might burn like gasoline and fire,
It's a chance we'll have to take.
We may shine, we may shatter,
We may be picking up the pieces here on after,
We are fragile, we are human,
And we are shaped by the light we let through us,
We break fast, cause we are glass.
We are glass.
With a heart that can't be broken,
Is like trying to see the light with eyes that can't be opened.
Yeah, we both carry baggage,
We picked up on our way, so if you love me do it gently,
And I will do the same.
We may shine, we may shatter,
We may be picking up the pieces here on after,
We are fragile, we are human,
We are shaped by the light we let through us,
We break fast, cause we are glass.
Cause we are glass.
I'll let you look inside me, through the stains and through the cracks,
And in the darkness of this moment,
You see the good and bad.
But try not to judge me, 'cause we've walked down different paths,
But it brought us here together, so I won't take that back.
We may shine, we may shatter,
We may be picking up the pieces here on after,
We are fragile, we are human,
We are shaped by the light we let through us,
We break fast, cause we are glass.
We might be oil and water, this could be a big mistake,
We might burn like gasoline and fire,
It's a chance we'll have to take.
We may shine, we may shatter,
We may be picking up the pieces here on after,
We are fragile, we are human,
And we are shaped by the light we let through us,
We break fast, cause we are glass.
We are glass.
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