Expectation

Expectation

Eleven days have passed in this new year. For me it is an interesting experience, I generally know more or know nothing of what the coming year's theme will hold in store. This year is slow to reveal itself. I am not sure if this is the stress of holidays, traditions ending, family deaths, or a head cold, or all of the above. I tried to be open at the close of 2009 as is my tradition, but I was too tired and open ended up being translated into relaxed and from relaxed to passed out in sleep. However, today it feels like the roots of the theme have unfurled. 2009 was 'hope'. 2010 seems to be 'expectation'.

In the intervening years I've learned to hold myself back from anticipating what the year's themes will mean or how they'll play out. (As I'm often wrong anyway.) It's interesting though...this word...as there is so much in it, this year really could go any number of ways....and I find myself in the same seat as I sit and think 'ok...so there it is...now what...that's ummm vague.' I like the gift I'm given in these little themes. Some years it is clearer, more definitive in tone or message. The last several years have been more the vague...there's a present under the tree but you've no idea what it could be, but it's there. Last year, hope, I remember being a bit stupefied by that...how can a year be about that, and yet I knew it to be the general undercurrent I was entering. So what will a year of expectation be? To me I half wonder if this is a 'patience' lesson in disguise. And I'd like to say I'm happy about that...but well...patience is a hard lesson, and if I've been there and done that...and now I'm back....I guess that tells you how effective the first 'lessons' went. But it might be something else, something unexpected. Sometimes these themes play out that way too. Like I said I try not to anticipate anymore but simply be...but I speculate none-the-less...it's how I'm wired.

Yet, I still find it rather nebulous.

I've had this suppressed restlessness inside...well as soon as I came out of the hours of sleep induced healing that is. It feels like a pressure inside that is going to burst out. I find myself entertaining big restless zany thoughts. I've been in this seat before. It isn't the small restlessness of starting a new craft project; no, this restlessness is much grander in scale. I feel sorry for my best friend who has been the recipient to my feeling of something waking up inside, ready to move, but not having the direction to do so....she's had to sit there watching as the cheetah inside paced the bars willing them open so I could run, and keep running.

I bought 7 new plants. In January. When it's 30 degrees outside, even in Texas. And more importantly, when I don't have what most would call a green thumb...the closest I've come is three years. I've bought maybe 15 books, and read 4 from a previous book frenzy and 2 that I borrowed from a friend. I've looked into buying a house. Does buying a car four months ago count? I've told my boss I'm interested in living abroad for months on end, up to and including a year...when I have no practical idea what I'd do with my stuff or anything in between nor even what country my boss is considering or even if I speak the language. I've put about 600 miles on my car in two weeks just driving....and this was seriously holding myself back from driving farther...I joined an online dating service for the first time in two years. I'm basically crawling out of my skin. I'm looking into buying a puppy. I want to go whitewater rafting...something, anything to take this edge off. I wish this edge had hit in summer when some of these ideas didn't feel so crazy. If I were a better woods-woman I'd just throw myself into nature for several hours. However, in this state...and trust me I know this from experience....what happens is I go into the woods, get lost where there's no cell coverage and no one knows where I am, or when I started, with no supplies other than the clothes on my back and the shoes on my feet....and it takes a lot of prayer and lots of walking...and lots of hours, and a minor miracle to make it back. Expectation and Stir Crazy...I'm too tied up with stir crazy to really think about expectation. My friend says this is a sign that big change is coming. Bring it on! Something, anything...but maybe not dating...maybe that's too drastic....lol, oh well, I'm in it.

In the midst of this emotion I've been reading the Bible...and what should press in on my heart, but: patience, take it slow, wait, be. And internally, I blurt out, "AH HA! I knew this "expectation" is really patience in disguise!" Yet, it isn't really; if patience occurs it feels like an after thought...a by product of a much bigger piece, peace.

In the story of Abraham (Genesis 15-17) being told to pick up and go...that he in essence would be the father of a nation I found myself in awe of his faith. And, perhaps for different reasons that appear on the surface. I've been in his shoes when God said go...and the assurance that comes with such a command makes it seem not so much about faith as it is about promise. And, I don't mean to mitigate the faith it did take Abram to pick it all up and just head off to unknown locations. However, where I found myself pausing this time was when God takes Abram out on a star filled night and said....the stars would be an example of the number of descendants he would have....and Abram says, 'yeah, ok' and then two verses later as God tells him he will have a certain piece of land Abram's faith pendulum swings the other direction and he has doubts. The story continues, and time passes by and he still hasn’t fathered one child let alone nations. In the middle of that you see him puzzling it out, posing his perplexity before God while displaying amazing faith in on the other hand.

I think for me, it'd be the opposite. Asking me to believe the stars were smaller in number to what God planned to be a multitude of nations of people to be born seems so much harder to grasp than that I'd have a 'home', a piece of land—even a big piece of land. Count the stars. Count the grains of sand on a beach. These are huge, infinite tracks....yet it is Abraham’s faith that stands the sands of time. I find myself comforted by the fact that while a pillar of faith that his life is often epitomized by there are still places in his story where he struggled, and had his ‘hey, wait a second’s along with his ‘yeah, now how’s that going to work’ moments.

I’ve had a couple people indicate to me that they think this is going to be a good year for me. I certainly would not throw grace and blessings back if they show up, but I’ve been in the struggle and get by mode for so long now that it’s hard to imagine a different life. To be honest, I’ve been really struggling not to just let go of some of my dearest dreams. I am definitely in the ‘yeah, now how’s that going to work’ part of the story. The ‘yeah, sure, maybe’, like Sarah ready to almost outright laugh at the “odds” and the “likelihood”. Perhaps my stir crazy feeling is born here…if it’s time to let go of certain dreams I want to move on, not halt my life or waste the precious months—the precious life of today in waiting for something that won’t ever be. Of course there is still a deep ache, but I don’t want to be solely defined by this anymore.

Yet, ironically and conversely, there is a hue of fear coloring the skyscape. I’m ready to shed that to. So here I am, eleven days past the new year under an open sky, counting stars and paused in a ‘hey wait, can’t I just hide under this tree?’

A story woke up in my mind, and it’s been keeping me company the past three days. It isn’t the story I expected, but for now…I’m profoundly grateful…for the story, for the voice in my head, for the slack of loneliness, for wherever this takes me. I’m not able to fit it into the whole, but I’m not in a reason why frame of mind, just a simple, let it be frame. So it is. So I am.

2010 can continue to hold its breath. A journey’s been begun. The bend, the corner…that’s tomorrow’s adventure. Hope began it, expectation is the path...and the end...that is well beyond tomorrow...