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Saturday, June 12, 2004
I'm not going to get to play with the pretty yellow paint this weekend, because there's no way I'm going to get through the prep work. Every place I look, there's another spot to be spackled, another place which is just gross and is going to need more than the simple TSP wipedown I had planned. My life = spackle. sand. caulk. degrease.
It's entirely possible that my original timeline was just wildly unrealistic to begin with. I tend to overestimate my own productivity, or maybe it's more that I think, well I just read a book or a magazine article about what I'm going to do, so of course I'll just whip right through it. And then I'm disappointed when it takes longer than it did to visualize it. Still, I don't know how many things I'd actually start if I knew just what was going to be involved.
God is sort of like that; you finally reach out and grab ahold of Jesus because, in that moment of crisis or terror or whatever, you'd grab anything, and God will often do an extra glimmer to get your attention just when you need something to grab.
And then things get better - maybe because of God, maybe just because that's the cycle - and you're still sitting there holding onto God and then God lifts you up on your feet and says, babe, we got through that, and now we're just gonna take off a couple layers of skin that aren't doing you any good, see. Yeah, you'll be a little bit raw for a while, because the new skin doesn't grow in right away. It might suck sometimes, you won't enjoy all of it, but just hang in there, ok? Hold my hand.
And then you're sitting there all raw and confused and nothing that used to work to numb you out does the job anymore, but the shiny soothy thing you were getting from God before seems out of reach and did I mention that this part sucks? And then slowly you start to grow new, better skin, that's not as hardened. People can get in, maybe for the first time ever.
That's the time that interests me the most; the moment when you first realize that the relationship with God is going to require things of you that you are probably not prepared to give, and that it will probably hurt a bit. It's the time of purging, followed by the gangly feeling of not really having a definable self, because so much got thrown out.
I'm actually very uncomfortable with things that are on their way to becoming something else. I think this at least partially explains why I am, as Dennis says, in such a goddamn hurry to paint the kitchen and get our things settled in there. I'm not good at waiting. I'm inclined to whip through the prep work in a decidedly half-assed manner. I think that's why I've had so many false starts vocationally; I keep wanting to rush ahead, to figure out what God wants from me, and everytime I do, I feel the hand on my shoulder pushing me back down into my chair. Obstacles appear, wise words are spoken to me...the message gets through.
It's hard to accept that I am on my way to becoming something else.
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