In suspense and incomplete

These past few days I have been facing the wearying mental fatigue that comes from living in transition. In the unknown. Knowing that this is where you need to be right now even though everything in you screams for you to fast forward 6 months or a year from now just so that you can see for a fact that things will work themselves out and you will be okay. I want desperately to know how the story (or even just this chapter) ends, but as I flip to the last page I find merely an empty space that hasn’t been filled with words yet. And this makes me want to panic. The only way to get to that page is to patiently day-by-day live out the rest of the story. And this takes time. And patience (and more than a few good therapy sessions with friends and or certified professionals).

As I feel my way tenderly onto shifting sands, I remember the words of Teilhard de Chardin… “Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.”

Feel the anxiety. That is not what I wanted to hear. I don’t like being anxious, and I thought there was something about the divine that was supposed to bring us peace, certainly not the feeling of being on a high wire extended out over a deep canyon. And yet this seems to be the place that God wants me to hang out for a little bit. In suspense and incomplete. Trying to find enough things to hold me steady so that I don’t fall off the wire, knowing that eventually I will get to the other side, holding steadfast to the memory of being in these periods of transition before and knowing that as slowly as I am moving, I am in fact moving and progress can only come one step at a time.

And so as I accept the anxiety, I also search for stable points of balance. That which I can use to steady my gaze and allow me to breathe a little easier- belly laughs and good food with people who love me and know me, calming words from a voice that I have known since the womb, sleeping and the restoration that comes from knowing it doesn’t have to be figured out in a day, singing from my gut in the car when no one is listening, gazing steadily at the face of a sleeping baby who has yet to worry about anything, or even a long lingering hug, allowing me to breathe deeply and let go of the weight of the anxiety that presses down on me. This is what I hang on to. This is what helps me to day-by-day place one foot in front of the other and carefully make my way across the unknown, accepting that while my soul is in suspense and incomplete, it is never alone and always guided by the grace of God.