An example of (pseudo) literary processing

I’m not sure I have resolved any of the things that have occupied my thoughts for the last few months. That’s how I work. I dig deep and then just climb out and leave a big hole. I usually remember where the holes are and when I’m ready I’ll jump back in and get back to work. Right now though, I’m taking my 15-minute government mandated break.

It’s funny though, how a break from serious, introspective, critical thought has to be filled with something. If, like me, you take a break from such thinking and don’t let some other purposeful mental activity take over then you may, like me, start to feel like the break has done nothing but fatigue your mind and waste your resources. It’s also curious that work done in the right way may in itself provide what a break is meant to do. At work or on break it seems to me that in some arena I need (or at least feel like I need) to be receiving on a personal, relational level. I need a relationship that is a break from everything. One that helps me be renewed, relaxed, replenished, restored, peaceful, happy, purpose filled. You get it…all the good stuff. Without that I’m struggling. It almost feels like trying to stay up all night. It’s about 3 in the morning and everything is pretty blurry, you have the occasional moments of clarity, exhilaration, inspiration, but mostly it’s that feeling of fighting a losing battle. Just trying to hang on until the sunrise. When in the warmth of the sun you can lie on the grass and fall asleep to the trees shaking off the night. I’m ready for that sleep, ready for that comfort, ready for those dreams. So, because of that…

I am anxious. I am anxious to have a place to live (we’re getting kicked out so the owners newly ex-wife can move in). I am anxious to be home in Montana with my family. I’m anxious about my time at home because I have a lot of expectations (read hope for all the stuff in the first paragraph) about it and I have a pretty strong need to be with people who I have history with and really I just miss my folks and I’m afraid that there won’t be enough time to relax and share my life with them. I’m afraid I will leave still feeling like I’m barely making it. I’m afraid that home won’t be what I need it to be, that it will be rushed and forced.

I’m anxious about the future. I have a job for four more months and then I’ll have to find another way to pay the bills and hopefully save enough money to go to a few weddings this summer.

I am anxious to be somewhere and be done with transition for a while. I need to be somewhere where I have roots and can feel founded. I hoped for that feeling here but I think in my heart I knew it wouldn’t come. Most of my close friends have moved and my situation in this city is different than it has ever been. To be honest, this place could never be my home. There is no connection to growing up. I can’t climb a mountain (I mean a real mountains not the hills of Santa Barbara) and look out at wilderness. I can’ t stand in a river at sunset. I can’t even get more than 20 minutes away from anybody.

As much as I want to be somewhere and be rooted there those feelings are almost equally opposed by desires to go back to Latin America. I can’t stop thinking about how I can work it out to be there….but that is a whole topic in itself.

This week I’ve been trying to remember that God keeps His promises. Believing that has been relatively comfortable up to this point but the stakes seem a lot higher now and it appears that God is keeping His promises in different ways than I can see.

I know that it is not nice, and even a bit unfair to end any kind of thought process with a completely new thought, but I’m going to anyway…maybe this under what I’ve been trying to say for a while now…

The way I’ve been doing Christianity is not working. It is unfulfilling and cliché, the burden of what I know is not light, the yoke is not easy and my soul is not at rest. There must be more.