Well, it's April. Time alternately jumps and drags as I travel through Lent here in the monastery. Half the time, I want time to slow down and just stay put because I know how life goes here, I'm comfortable, and I like what I do. The other half, I'm just waiting and waiting for the next step, wishing I could move forward. I am stuck in transition.
In a lot of ways, this whole year has been one of transition - from school to the adult world, from insane busyness to extreme peacefulness, from living with people my own age to living with women much older and wiser than I. I've gotten used to most of it, but as my year comes to a close, I have found myself in much the same place as I was last April - not sure of the future, not knowing what will come next.
Last year, this was a horrible period of doubt and struggle for me. I didn't make it into grad school, and I felt like everything I had worked for academically was now worthless, that I wasn't as good as I had thought, and I went home to work as a janitor in my old high school. It was a challenge to maintain my self-worth some days; I felt like I had been deflated. I gradually worked through that, with the help of several of the Sisters at St. Ben's, plus my family and friends. I tried to accept the place I was in, the place God put me, and I eventually embraced it as a much-needed break, a time of peace and rejuvenation, a time to help someone else instead of always helping myself. I have grown so much this year BECAUSE I'm not in school, because I have time to think and process and read slowly and stand outside in the rain or the sun and just soak in life.
But now, I'm getting restless. I'm still waiting for admission decisions from graduate schools, waiting for God to show me which fork in the road I need to take. I am getting tired of sitting and thinking - I am ready to DO again! And I can DO here: my work with the Tanzanian sisters continues to be rewarding, and I have read as many books this semester as I would have if I was in school. But I still have energy to spend, and lately, most of those get funneled into worrying. I worry that things won't work out again, that I won't find nearly as wonderful of a back-up plan as volunteering if I don't go to school, that I'll be stuck, wasted, somewhere I don't want to be.
It's been a challenge for me to continue to be patient. I didn't expect to need this much endurance! But this morning, I came across a journal entry on my computer that I wrote during my sophomore year of college, and it really spoke to me. I was writing about my hopes for the future and how hard it was to wait - to know who I would fall in love with, what I would do with my life, where I would live. In my writing, I was passionate about telling myself to be patient - and to rest in God. I had this burning desire to make God the first priority in my life, and to let God worry about everything while I waited patiently for myself to be ready, for my life to bring me to the place where I would be able to know. I knew that I wasn't ready for the things I wanted to know during my sophomore year, and I really found peace in being patient and letting God take care of it. In the three years since I wrote that, I've lost a bit of my patience. I want to know! I want to be in control! I want to make plans!
My lesson for today is not only to work hard on peaceful patience, but also to not give up hope. It's easy to spend time just dwelling on the fact that I don't know yet, to feel despair. But I have always been an optimistic person, and today the sun is shining. When God closes a door, God opens a window. If it's not the way I expected, it will still be in God's plan. And I can still read and write and learn and sing and teach, no matter where I am. And I can always love, which is really the only thing that matters.
Happy spring! Peace and love.
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