Perspective

As I caught up with a friend during a long overdue phone date last week, I was struck by how often she expressed gratitude or amazement over how my life has come together over the last three months.  When we last talked, it was January and I was experiencing both a frozen winter on the outside and a burned-out heart on the inside.  So many little (and big) things have happened since then, and I suppose her advantage in this conversation was being able to see all the changes at once.  When I step back and wiggle myself into the place from which she views my life, I find the results rather awe-inspiring too.  In the almost nine months since we last talked, and mostly in the last three or four months, I have changed jobs, moved, traveled a small chunk of the world, embarked on new adventures around town, and totally opened up the possibilities for my future.  However, during that phone call, I was a little confused.  Isn’t my life really hard right now?  Am I or am I not always involved in some seemingly important, internal, existential debate?  Am I not stuck between, well, anything and everything right now?  


Here is where it turns out that I have been mistaken in my perspective on my life over the last nine months (or really, let’s be honest- it’s more like two years).  Because I have not felt close to God, I have assumed that God has not felt close to me.  Because I assumed God is not close to me, I have also assumed that I’m on my own as far as plans go.  The conclusion, then, is that where I am right now is a product of my own planning, or mostly, where I have landed by chance as I have stumbled along the way.  But this sweet friend seemed to be under the impression that God has been directing my life all along, leading and guiding me, but mostly just providing for me when I have not been able to provide for myself.  The biggest example of this is where I am living, which my friend referred to as my “soft place to land.”  What a beautiful image!  But more importantly, what a beautiful truth.  I am not alone, and I am not in charge.  Now, of course, I know that, and have known it for as long as I can remember.  But there is a difference between knowing truth and living in it, and I suffer from the human condition of being stuck in that gap, halfway between intellectual assent and a changed life.  


Proof that I have known this truth before is found in my deep affection for the book The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis.  This book expresses this truth in such a unique and beautiful way.  The last time I spoke at youth group, I read the students my favorite part of this story, where Aslan reveals where He has been at work in young Shasta’s journey.  The revelation is not what any of us expect- sometimes He has seemed like an enemy instead of a friend, but the beauty of the providence is heart-rending.  I can’t even write about it without getting emotional.  The proof that, while I have known this truth, I have not lived this truth is found at the beginning of this paragraph, and in my fear about whatever is coming next, insecurity about hastily constructed plans and seemingly wasted time, and general ingratitude for where I am right now.  My hope is that each time I “know” this truth anew, I move one step closer to living it, because it seems to me that living this truth opens the door for the gracious spirit of humility and thankfulness that my friend shared with me last week to creep into every corner of my life and gently but forcibly remove the spirit of fear and timidity currently causing me to miss the goodness of God right before my very eyes.  And I, for one, will take thankfulness over self-imposed, needless misery any day.