Looking to the Past

It takes a great deal of strength to refuse to answer

 anything of importance too quickly.

 It is often better to let newly emerging question answer itself over time 

than to insist on dealing with it from perspectives

 too old to be useful to the present situation.

 – Joan Chittister.

I have been thinking a lot of about life’s transitions lately. Perhaps because the past 5 months as well as the next 7 months have been and will be one big transition for me filled with questions and various puzzle pieces lying before me which I can’t seem to put together yet. As soon as I feel the relief of one piece moving into (or out of) place I turn back around to face all the unknowns still lurking around and it can feel a little overwhelming at times. I remember before leaving Brazil, my therapist, Josias told me that we should always be cautious about deciding things in periods of transition and that it is always better to let the dust settle in our lives so that we are able to see clearly enough to make the right choices.

Well I have never been one with much patience, and I think in our culture plagued by the immediateness of having everything instantly at our fingertips we have forgotten the benefit of having to wait. I realize that instead of cultivating patience in my life, my immediate response, when faced with the fear of the unknown is to look to the past to find comfort as well as answers. Go back to what I know. How often do we second-guess ourselves, when one of life’s circumstances isn’t working out, even though we are fairly certain we are right where we need to be, and immediately begin to idealize the past and look for the answers there instead of patiently waiting for and living into them in the future.

We are creatures of comfort, even when what is comfortable is not good for us. We long for that which we know (which we think we can control) over that which we don’t know (and therefore can’t control). Except that no growth ever came from living in the past. I am reminded of the Israelites wandering in the desert and wishing for the return of their chains of bondage in Egypt. Why? Because they knew what was behind them and they didn’t know what lay ahead of them. And although most of us don’t find ourselves wandering in a literal desert, we are indeed the same. Something doesn’t work out or we take a risk to try something new, and we find ourselves standing on the shaky ground of the unknown and we feel that pull to immediately go back to our old habits, our old relationships, our old ways of thinking and being.

But there is much wisdom in the words of Joan (and Josias). We must learn the patience to wait for our newly emerging questions to answer themselves, and our newly emerging selves to find their footing on the solid ground of time and space. We must learn to wait it out until the dust settles and we can find our truths not in sappy sentimentality but in the truth of God’s grace and love and constant promise for resurrection, no matter how risky it may sound at the moment.  And if something from your past is meant to come back around, if that relationship or opportunity is meant to be in some distant time in the future, you can rest assured that it will be. And it will come back around not because you were moving backwards, holding onto it or controlling it, but because your winding path encounters it again when you are in a different place, ready to receive it with openness and gratitude. In the meantime, Lord give us the grace and the courage to wait in the face of the unknown. 

And please let the dust settle soon…