Complete transparency, I didn't have any idea what I was going to write about until about an hour ago.
I had been praying (whining in God's ear) that I would be inspired, and the words would suddenly start writing themselves in my mind faster than I could write them down. I wanted to write, I wanted to feel the fullness of putting something more than a selfie out into the world. I craved the subtle rush of exposing a vulnerable part of myself to a world that doesn't always welcome it with open arms. Writing being my first love, I never want it to feel forced. I don't want to put myself in a position where I revert to the girl I was in my college composition class: writing in circles just to put words on the page. I want my words to mean something to me, and hopefully someone else. That, however, is easier said than done. I can make myself do a lot of things. I make myself get up at 5am to hit the gym. I made myself take finance class after finance class to get that major I wanted. I make myself drive responsibly and do my laundry and pay my bills on time. Easy peasy. I can make myself do just about anything that needs to be done.
Except writing. Believe me, I've tried. I've had those days where the motivation is there, the perfect latte is steaming next to my laptop, and the whole afternoon is free. So I sit there. I sit there some more. I sip my coffee... and I keep sitting. The occasional sentence will start, only to meet an untimely demise at the hands of the delete button. I could have the perfect playlist for brain flow humming in the background, the perfect mood lighting, the soft breeze flowing through the open window, all of that poetic nonsense. Still nothing. If the words aren't ready to come, they simply don't.
I've gotten frustrated with myself. My brain basically narrates my days as a novel while I live my oh so interesting life. You're telling me my inner dialogue is akin to an excerpt of Anne of Green Gables yet I can't even come up with the words to write a few paragraphs on the spot? How does that happen? I am as wordy as they come. A natural thesaurusizer (and connoisseur of new words), fabricator, and teller of tales.
But time and time again I find myself sitting here, fingers dancing over my keyboard, with nothing but elevator music playing in my brain.
All that to say, when inspiration strikes me, it's a small cause for celebration. Sometimes panic, if I can't find a pen. I've quite recently learned not to consider myself a writer. For that to be the case, I'd have to be the one responsible for the ideas I put out into the world.
I am a vessel.
I am the fingers that type the words that the Lord places on my heart. Let me rephrase: I am the girl who screeches her car into a parking lot and scribbles an idea down on a Sonic drink napkin because the Holy Spirit drove an idea into her skull like a flash of lightening.
These words aren't mine. I simply write them down.
That's why an hour ago, when I was six feet underwater, I nearly choked on chlorinated water as I burst through the surface trying to get to my phone and open the notes app. The lightening bolt had struck.
Let me paint a picture: I had just finished a long, sweaty summer workout. I was drenched like a middle linebacker during training camp (putting that analogy in so my boyfriend knows I listen when he speaks). The sight of the empty apartment pool, in all its' artificial blue glory, was calling my name.
Keep in mind, I am a college graduate, a semi-professional adult working in the life-draining field of finance. You'd think I wouldn't revert to being an eight year old the second I saw the opportunity for a cannonball. You would, however, be quite wrong.
Fast forward and I shamelessly leapt into the deep end. You know the feeling, the rush of wind, the sun-warmed water swallowing you up, the world suddenly going deafeningly silent. I sank slowly into the depths of the pool, feeling childlike bliss.
As I felt my toes graze the rough bottom of the pool, I kicked back to the top and thought to myself:
What is it about swimming that is still so enticing? It's just as much fun to me now as it was when I was a fifth grader on summer vacation.
I floated on my back, ears still in the water, soaking in the silence.
The weightlessness. After being heavy all day, jumping in the pool and feeling lighter than air is so euphoric. All my life I walk around carrying all of my weight, until those few moments when I am lingering in the six-foot water, hair splayed around me like a troll doll, when I am weightless.
That's when the lightening struck.
I am heavy. All day I carry around the weight of my insecurities, the pressure to succeed and achieve, the cumbersome load of societal expectations, the burden of past heartache, the oppression of a 24 hour day versus my 40 hours of to-do list items.
I am HEAVY.
No wonder I crave weightlessness. Imagine a day, waking up to none of that baggage. None of the pressure to fit twelve accomplishments in before lunchtime. None of the concern for looking the absolute best. None of the unexplainable need to make a name for myself in a field even I can't pinpoint. None of the guilt from past mistakes or shame or days I'd rather forget. Imagine just setting it all down.
A girl can dream, right?
In that moment, a quote from a friend came to mind. She told me in passing something that has resonated with me more and more ever since I first heard it.
Life is just the path between two gardens. Meaning, for people who share the same faith as me, we once lived in Heaven and we will again. We came from a perfect place, and we will return to it, after our brief stint on Earth is over.
It's a difficult concept to wrap my brain around since the implications are eternal. This life is all our conscious souls have ever known, so how can it be just a tiny stop on our metaphysical journey? You're telling me my twenty-one years of living is just a microscopic blip in my existence? This lifetime is merely a potty-break at QuikTrip on the road trip of forever??? Okay - you probably get the point.
We've all heard phrases like "ashes to ashes" or "dust to dust" but where did that come from? Surely it's not just a cynical way to allude to cremation and death?
Luckily, it's just as poetic as I'd like it to be.
Ecclesiastes 3:20 says: "All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return."
Genesis 3:19 says: "...until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; and for dust you are and to dust you will return."
Last but far from the least, my personal favorite.
James 4:14 says: "Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."
At first, that can seem like a shot to the ego, and if anyone's guilty of an ego who bruises easily, it is yours truly. I'm nothing but a fleeting mist? Excuse me, Jesus, don't you know who I am? Haven't you seen my laundry list of accomplishments? Don't you know how relevant I am?
Of course he has, silly girl (me, talking to myself). But what, of any Earthly value, can come with me when I get to the end of my path and arrive back at the gates of the garden?
Do I plan to arrive at the pearly gates with my college diploma in hand, wearing my lone pair of designer shoes and proudly touting my moderately-popular Instagram page? If Heaven is anything like a nightclub, the angel working as a door bouncer would surely laugh me right back down to Earth.
"...all come from dust, and to dust all return."
Unfortunately, Heaven has an even worse luggage policy than Allegiant Airlines. Sorry honey, better leave that fifth grade spelling bee trophy back here on Earth.
The bad news: Jesus doesn't care what you've done.
The good news: Jesus doesn't care what you've done.
He loved us as the dust we were, knowing we'd be nothing more than that very same dust when all was said and done. His love is undeserved, unearned, and impossible to lose. All we have to do is accept it.
I can't speak for anyone else, but that's far easier than passing Advanced Accounting 300. Not to mention, an eternity is probably worth a little more than a brief stint in a career I groan about choosing anyways.
So why oh why do I place so much value in the things of this Earth?
Every day I gladly put on all of my weight. I pick up each and every one of my grudges and hold them all tightly. I heap the pressure on myself to do more, be more, achieve more. I crumble under the burden of striving to be a perfect girl who just doesn't exist. I walk out the door, already doubled over under the weight of all I put on myself.
Why?
Here's where the tough love part comes in. The part where I look myself in the mirror, stick a metaphorical finger into my own chest, and say "lighten up."
Put down the anger. Put down the endless laundry list of boxes to check. Put down the striving and the jealousy and the bitterness and the dissatisfaction. Lighten up your load.
On this path between two gardens, do I want to waste my brief stint in this world drowning? After much thought, I have concluded that does not sound like the most pleasant way to live. I'd much prefer to be weightless.
I still want to succeed. I still want to be chosen for a boast-worthy promotion, I still want to be a published author, I still want my bikini body to be summer ready. I wouldn't be my type-3 self if I didn't have a little of that spark. What I mean is, by lightening up, I free myself from all of those things being chains tied to my happiness. If none of that ever happened, I would still find joy. By lightening up, I am cutting all of the ropes that tether my contentment to things of this world.
When I ran track in high school, I hated running. Loathed. But now I love it. The difference? I don't have to run now. I choose to.
When my alarm goes off for work in the mornings, I curse the day I decided to apply for a 9-5. But when my alarm goes off for the gym, I leap out of bed. The difference? I don't have to get up, I choose to.
When I free myself from the obligation to succeed, to be pretty, to be accomplished, to be well-known, to be independent, to be revolutionary, I free myself to enjoy those things. Why? Because I don't need to be any of them to be happy. When my contentment and my peace are no longer rooted in fleeting things, I can finally find the beautiful joy in them.
When I sit down to write a bestselling novel, a tumbleweed may as well be rolling through the ghost town of my mind. When I free myself to write for nothing but the joy it brings me, the words flow out of my fingertips faster than I ever typed in my junior high computer class (I would have most definitely snagged the words-per-minute record tonight).
There you have it, folks. Lighten up. Why spend our one remarkably brief lifetime pining over things that we will one day leave behind?
Think of video games. We all have a male figure in our life who has come dangerously close to putting an Xbox controller through the drywall because something happened in their virtual world that set them off. You just want to look at them, dead in their crazy eyes, and say, "why do you care so much?! It isn't even real!"
I can only imagine how many times Jesus has looked down on me and thought the exact same thing. Sweet child, why do you care so much? This isn't even real.
I say that not to discredit the very real pains of this world. I have felt real pain and I have seen it in the lives of others' and I don't mean to downplay or diminish true grief and suffering. I speak only to the trivial things of this world. Things "of the flesh", if I may pretend to be a scholar for a moment.
Love the things of this world. Find the simple joy in them. Laugh at the people who take themselves too seriously (hey, that used to be me). Remember that we're just passing through.
Lighten up.
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