This is one of those feelings blogs where I went too long without journaling and now you all have to deal with them.
Today I rode on a Greyhound bus. Last night I watched “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and it was wonderful: the romantic life on the road, full of transcendent moments looking at beautiful horizons, jumping into vehicles with questionable people… you know, all that stuff that always turns out great. I felt very inspired as I went to pack my suitcase (again), laying out my ripped jeans and mitty-esque hooded sweater for the next day.
Then that inspiration dissipated. As I cleaned my room out I realized this meant another set of goodbyes, another closing of a season, another transition in this shaky ride. Unfortunately no one showed up to sing Elton John songs to me. Instead I bit my lip and kept packing. Because what else can you do?
Today I am sad. Maybe it is fatigue from the travel or just being dehydrated, but it feels like something a lot deeper. I miss my friends. I miss my life. I miss waking up in my apartment in my bed. I miss all the things I like to imagine make me who I am. As this summer continues everything is being stripped away except myself and the Person I think called me into this whole mess.
Someone I knew used to say “disillusionment is just the dissing of illusions.” Today I wish those illusions could have kept holding me up a little longer. I feel disillusioned with the road, with the promises I bought into. I stepped into this deal with the illusion that I could accept the fact that it was not about me and my comfort. Being confronted with reality is a whole other matter.
Today I feel whiny. I want to be patient and selfless, for the sake of everyone else in the world but also so I will have done it right. I will have laid down my life and put my trust in all the right places. Instead surrender looks an awful lot like me crying into the carpet begging to get it all back, to give up all this nonsense and live in the life I left behind. The problem is, that life is already gone, and now I am just grasping at smoke. Someone else wakes up in that apartment and listens to the branches scrape against the window. Other voices comfort where mine once did, other hands reach out and care. This is not a bad thing. It is a reminder that He is faithful in all seasons, and He does not replicate but creates anew.
I am out of wishes. I do not know what to wish for. Getting back the life I left behind would be like trying to squeeze into one of those adorable (now vintage) t-shirts I owned in grade school. It looks great from where I stand now, but I do not belong in it. I could wish away the feelings, but the thing about feelings is they are a barometer for what is happening deep inside me at a place too intricate for me to understand. My hope is that as I lose these little bits of myself they are replaced with little bits of the right stuff, little bits of Someone Else.
Today I remembered that I am not enough and that is okay. The road is not enough, adventure is not enough, being reunited with my full wardrobe is not enough. There is only one Enough, and knowing Him is the only adventure I have been promised.
Maybe today is an adventure after all.