This is attempt number four at a post coming from the weekend. I started one on Sunday and then another one on Monday, then I finished one yesterday but then I started another one this morning before starting this one tonight. Besides the one from yesterday, I couldn’t bring myself to finish any of the others, but hopefully I’ll be able to turn the trick with this one.
I was biking home from work tonight and realized that I feel like I have a chip on my shoulder. I’m bent out of shape and I’m not even sure why. I talked about this yesterday and I think I gave the impression that I was able to take care of it with a little reflection, but it clearly wasn’t a lasting solution – which shouldn’t be a surprise. When it comes to leaning on God for support it’s not the kind of thing that you go in for every three months for a top-up.
Sometimes I’ll find myself on my bike and it’s like I’m looking to get mad at somebody – I want to yell at them and blow off some steam. I generally don’t, but I’ve got this mindset like everybody is out to cut me off or to give me grief. It’s ridiculous. It’s a terrible way to bike. I had to take a deep breath and just slow down.
By the end of the day I found myself in prayer asking for strength. There are so many Psalms and passages that speak of God being our strength – leaning on God – taking refuge in God. Sometimes I stop and I think to myself, “what does that really mean? How do you actually lean on God? How does that work in practice?”
Well, today, it looked like me praying and asking God to be my strength and just like to let go of the chip and to make room for God to come in. My bike ride home was much better but I suspect that this may need to be my prayer and my practice for a little while.
If I’m going to be completely honest I think that what is at the root of my troubled state of mind is my trip home this weekend. I spent the weekend with my parents, and I want to be very clear that it’s not because of anything that anyone said or did. It was a good visit, but I think that there’s something about being in the house where I grew up that takes me back in time to a place in my life where I saw my life and the world in a certain way.
And now, when I go back I am reminded that I’m not in that place anymore. I’ve left it behind. I’m some twenty years removed and I’m not where I hoped I’d be when I set out into the world on my own. That glorious homecoming I suppose that I dreamed of has yet to take place. In some ways I feel the same as I did when I left – which is strange because I’m not the same.
It’s funny, because I had a really great weekend with my family. It was fun and we spent some quality time together. I’m hoping that in the coming months I can make more time to spend with my family, but at the same time that will mean that I’m also going to spend more time facing my own history, and the disappointment with where I am at this point in my life.
I know that I’m only forty. There is still a lot of time. There is a lot to be done. There’s much to look forward to. I’m certainly impatient to move forward on all of the things I’ve been working on, but there’s also fear that when I finally finish them that they will not measure up to my hopes.
I don’t know if I’m one of those people from one of those generations that has an inflated sense of his place in the world – I certainly felt like I was on a journey when I was a young man. I felt like I was heading somewhere, and while I certainly have achieved a lot of things in a lot of areas, I also feel like I’m well short of making the mark I always thought I’d make in this world. So as I move forward in time past the age of 40, I’m wrestling with the fear that maybe I’m not headed somewhere in the way I thought I was – maybe I’m not going to make the mark I thought I would.
If this is the case, then I will most certainly be fine. I’m a little bit like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. I’m not headed to the bridge. I don’t have a date with Clarence. I’ve seen that movie many times and I know what I’ve got. I’ve reached my hand into my pocket to find Zuzu’s petals so so many times. It’s good. It’s wonderful. I know it, but if things aren’t going to turn out the way I thought they would, I still have to come to terms with it. It makes me grumpy and irritable sometimes.
But nothing is settled yet. There’s lots of time. Things are still open. And so I write, even if I don’t know who’s going to read it and how they’ll feel about it. And I pray. “Give me strength, God. Be my strength, God. Thank you, God, for everything you’ve given and everything that’s still to come.”
I think it’s OK to be ‘grumpy and irritable sometimes’ about the way things seem to be going. Perhaps, when goals are higher, there is a greater tendency for frustration. Maybe disappointment with unattained goals is a good thing as long as it is balanced by an understanding of what you are already achieving.