i go to seek a great perhaps.
those words were penned by francois rabelais. i found them in a john green book & like many others, i fell in love with the words. the same way you fall in love, slowly & all at once. (another line from the same book)
i go to seek a great perhaps. february was a full month again. i saw good & i saw frustrating. i held rest & exhaustion. i grew into my own skin & i rattled with angst in the confines of my mind. and it was okay.
im goal oriented & i want to be healthy. i think that if you have the choice to change things that are important, things that will matter in the long run, then you should. you should try. and sometimes, that is great. and equally, sometimes it is terrible. sometimes it is a terrible use of energy. sometimes you sit in front of a listening human, who parrots back to you all the places where you are working so hard to be healthier... and you finally feel your own exhaustion. sometimes it is so worth it.
i am 24 now & can see the fruits of my work. i can feel where the Lord repaired some brokenness and i can breathe again. breathe better & more fully. but sometimes i find that my efforts have simply made me more tired. in my desperations, i forget to weep when i need to weep for the un-healed-not-yet-redeemed parts. i forget to laugh fully because i need the rest instead. i think we, as mostly upright (physically, not spiritually) human being are capable of unimaginable feats. i think that part of our innate indefinable humanity is the possibility of achieving more, or surviving better. i think we blame circumstance a lot, when more often than not, it is our own hands that shoveled out the ditch in front of us. we didn't trip on some rock that was haphazardly (or intentionally) left in our paths, we tripped over the stone we threw in our frustrations. we dig our own graves & write our own sentences sometimes. not all the time. but often.
and when you are someone who is mindful of when her hand is blistered from shoveling, or your devote time to looking at the path ahead for your own rocks, it becomes difficult to have sympathy. or empathy. because everyone starts griping about their circumstances, raising tiny balled up fists to the sky in anger at the God who gave his own breath. and you can see their life & see that the circumstances, though undoubtedly crafted & created by the good Lord, were influenced by their hands. by our hands. by human hands. i don't think that belittles the power of God. i don't think it means God has any less say in our ongoings. or any less power. but i think we forget to look in the mirror sometimes. your hands, my hands, our hands. they are red sometimes. they are dirty and messy. they have clearly felt the weight of an axe, and hewn the trees that now obstruct the way. they have clearly spent time shoveling dirt out of ditches. thats where the callouses come from sometimes, and the splinters. they are my hands too.
but i thought about all these things, and shared them with someone named Bentley, who has heaps of wisdom in her grey hairs. she heard the things i said, and showed them to me, and i felt my own tiredness. sometimes it is good & wise & better to look the splinters in your hands, and say, 'okay God, this is a little bit on me. i did this. i made it, and broke it. you didn't do this to me'. but sometimes, it gets easier and easier to assume that it was always you. you broke all of the things all of the times in all of the pieces. and the fractured shards in your palms are the work of your own hands. but that too is fallacy. sometimes your hands were in your pockets, innocent of the red. sometimes your hands were in someone else's, and they didn't touch the shovel. when you know that responsibility & genuine acceptance are the keys to growth & maturity, it is easy to want more. to try & absorb all of the broken things, to call them your own, and to maximize growth. this is called being controlling it is not the same thing as the fruit of the spirit. but it is easy.
so the great perhaps. when Bentley and i talk, i remember all of the 'perhaps-es". i remember that perhaps, it is better to shake your fist at the sky, even if its your fault that your life splintered the way it did. perhaps everyone else is crazy & just because everyone has a problem with bob, doesn't mean bob is necessarily the problem. bob just might be the most honest about what the problems are when nobody wants to hear about them. perhaps the things that you fight to make healthy, will never be healthy, no matter how hard you try. perhaps you are actually good, with dents. instead of being mottled with the illusion of good. or perhaps you are terrible and your 'good' only comes in brief moments. maybe the not-okay can be okay. it can be a new okay, and an okay-for-now. perhaps the best you can do is not the ideal, but "the next right thing". perhaps life is more breathing and 'next right things' than fighting for first time right things. maybe the disappointments are supposed to be louder than the accomplishments. maybe the absence is more nurturing than the presence. maybe its not all lost. but maybe it won't be redeemed either. maybe it just is.
so i go to seek a great perhaps. i want to explore the limits of my own possibilities. i want to know the Better More. the Really Real. i want to touch all the things and know why the fire, what's the word, burns. to be part of your world & mine. to be part of this world that we share, where we all participate. with our dents. where our insufficient/overstimulating chemicals leap across disjointed synapses, trying to make sense of the things we are sensing. which is not always the same is feeling. but neither is more real than the other. because reality is not rigid. your brain can make you things some silly things.
so let us seek the great perhaps. in our mania, let us wake with the sunrise on a porch at disney, instead of an air conditioned bed. in our highs, let us celebrate. in our lows, let us grieve, for grief is great. sometimes it is worth letting go of the healthier More in exchange for the living breathing kicking thing that is your own life.
do you know what your finger tips look like, or where they end? are your hands mangled from too many sports and too much play? are your fingers crooked & scarred? they're yours. take good care of them. be gentle with them when you jam them, or catch them in a car door. be gentle with yourself. wrestle for the rest in the great perhaps.
i go to seek a great perhaps. february was a full month again. i saw good & i saw frustrating. i held rest & exhaustion. i grew into my own skin & i rattled with angst in the confines of my mind. and it was okay.
im goal oriented & i want to be healthy. i think that if you have the choice to change things that are important, things that will matter in the long run, then you should. you should try. and sometimes, that is great. and equally, sometimes it is terrible. sometimes it is a terrible use of energy. sometimes you sit in front of a listening human, who parrots back to you all the places where you are working so hard to be healthier... and you finally feel your own exhaustion. sometimes it is so worth it.
i am 24 now & can see the fruits of my work. i can feel where the Lord repaired some brokenness and i can breathe again. breathe better & more fully. but sometimes i find that my efforts have simply made me more tired. in my desperations, i forget to weep when i need to weep for the un-healed-not-yet-redeemed parts. i forget to laugh fully because i need the rest instead. i think we, as mostly upright (physically, not spiritually) human being are capable of unimaginable feats. i think that part of our innate indefinable humanity is the possibility of achieving more, or surviving better. i think we blame circumstance a lot, when more often than not, it is our own hands that shoveled out the ditch in front of us. we didn't trip on some rock that was haphazardly (or intentionally) left in our paths, we tripped over the stone we threw in our frustrations. we dig our own graves & write our own sentences sometimes. not all the time. but often.
and when you are someone who is mindful of when her hand is blistered from shoveling, or your devote time to looking at the path ahead for your own rocks, it becomes difficult to have sympathy. or empathy. because everyone starts griping about their circumstances, raising tiny balled up fists to the sky in anger at the God who gave his own breath. and you can see their life & see that the circumstances, though undoubtedly crafted & created by the good Lord, were influenced by their hands. by our hands. by human hands. i don't think that belittles the power of God. i don't think it means God has any less say in our ongoings. or any less power. but i think we forget to look in the mirror sometimes. your hands, my hands, our hands. they are red sometimes. they are dirty and messy. they have clearly felt the weight of an axe, and hewn the trees that now obstruct the way. they have clearly spent time shoveling dirt out of ditches. thats where the callouses come from sometimes, and the splinters. they are my hands too.
but i thought about all these things, and shared them with someone named Bentley, who has heaps of wisdom in her grey hairs. she heard the things i said, and showed them to me, and i felt my own tiredness. sometimes it is good & wise & better to look the splinters in your hands, and say, 'okay God, this is a little bit on me. i did this. i made it, and broke it. you didn't do this to me'. but sometimes, it gets easier and easier to assume that it was always you. you broke all of the things all of the times in all of the pieces. and the fractured shards in your palms are the work of your own hands. but that too is fallacy. sometimes your hands were in your pockets, innocent of the red. sometimes your hands were in someone else's, and they didn't touch the shovel. when you know that responsibility & genuine acceptance are the keys to growth & maturity, it is easy to want more. to try & absorb all of the broken things, to call them your own, and to maximize growth. this is called being controlling it is not the same thing as the fruit of the spirit. but it is easy.
so the great perhaps. when Bentley and i talk, i remember all of the 'perhaps-es". i remember that perhaps, it is better to shake your fist at the sky, even if its your fault that your life splintered the way it did. perhaps everyone else is crazy & just because everyone has a problem with bob, doesn't mean bob is necessarily the problem. bob just might be the most honest about what the problems are when nobody wants to hear about them. perhaps the things that you fight to make healthy, will never be healthy, no matter how hard you try. perhaps you are actually good, with dents. instead of being mottled with the illusion of good. or perhaps you are terrible and your 'good' only comes in brief moments. maybe the not-okay can be okay. it can be a new okay, and an okay-for-now. perhaps the best you can do is not the ideal, but "the next right thing". perhaps life is more breathing and 'next right things' than fighting for first time right things. maybe the disappointments are supposed to be louder than the accomplishments. maybe the absence is more nurturing than the presence. maybe its not all lost. but maybe it won't be redeemed either. maybe it just is.
so i go to seek a great perhaps. i want to explore the limits of my own possibilities. i want to know the Better More. the Really Real. i want to touch all the things and know why the fire, what's the word, burns. to be part of your world & mine. to be part of this world that we share, where we all participate. with our dents. where our insufficient/overstimulating chemicals leap across disjointed synapses, trying to make sense of the things we are sensing. which is not always the same is feeling. but neither is more real than the other. because reality is not rigid. your brain can make you things some silly things.
so let us seek the great perhaps. in our mania, let us wake with the sunrise on a porch at disney, instead of an air conditioned bed. in our highs, let us celebrate. in our lows, let us grieve, for grief is great. sometimes it is worth letting go of the healthier More in exchange for the living breathing kicking thing that is your own life.
do you know what your finger tips look like, or where they end? are your hands mangled from too many sports and too much play? are your fingers crooked & scarred? they're yours. take good care of them. be gentle with them when you jam them, or catch them in a car door. be gentle with yourself. wrestle for the rest in the great perhaps.
