Dalton, my 12 year old came home from school Tuesday with a bit of a chip on his shoulder. When asked to answer my routine after school questions of "How was school?" and, "Did anything interesting happen?", he answered with an unusual bleakness. "School was boring. Nothing interesting happened. Nothing interesting ever happens. I wish there was something exciting that would happen."
It's January. He's twelve. The sameness of the cold and snow and rountine are beginning to wear on my youngest of men. I looked into his eyes and saw a deep and familiar need buried there. A need to feel, to be challenged, excited...alive.
I'm really not much diffrent than Dalton sometimes. Things settle into a routine and the fog of sameness rolls in around me and I feel trapped, unimportant, irrelevant. I become crabby, jaded and difficult to please. I don't know what I want or how I want it. I only know that I'm restless and need to move, to feel, to experience.
Right now, I want the snow to melt. I want the sun to shine bright and hot on the green fields that will sping up outside my windows. I want to take long walks down the dirt road on the kind of summer evening when the light, like a treasured friend, seems to linger just a little while longer than it was meant to. I want sunny days at the beach and dark nights around a campfire. What I desire is the carefree comradarie of summer.
I guess, like the seasons that pass outside my window, when I look at my life I want everyday to be like the best days, the easiest or the proudest or the most exciting. I suppose it doesn't surprise me that life isn't like that. I always knew that we weren't promised ease of living or endless happiness. And, when trouble rears it's head, I know God's presence and have been blessed to quickly sense His love and sheltering aid. Hard times don't surprise me much. What does take me by surprise though, is how difficult the "everyday and mundane" can be. Those are Oswald Chambers' descriptors, and I like them. Everyday...the monotony of work, laundry, meal prep, bed, wake up, do it again. The mundane, same customers, same groceries in the cart, same house, same responsibilities. Sameness can be excrutiating.
Thankfully I love some aspects of this everyday and mundane. I LOVE the basketball games. I LOVE the cozy movie nights that are easy to have with the kids. I love the beauty of the winter white landscape. It's just so easy to miss in the midst of all the sameness.
And then my thoughts turn to Haiti. To a people who would give anything for little bit of everyday. A moment of two of the old, familiar, mundane. And I think of friends who struggle with cancer or have children with demanding and difficult diagnosis'; who beg God for a little familiar sameness. Who wish they could go back and have a few more days of normal before their world was changed completely.
Perspective is everything they say. And I certainly think that applies here. I, like Dalton, need to shift my perspective.
In fact what could be more energizing than organizing some sort of drive to collect money for Haiti. And it might help ease the sameness of the day to stop in with coffee for a visit with a friend who's housebound with her disabled son. Now that I think of it, the possibilities are endless. It's really very exciting.
Hmmmm.... maybe that was the point of my being restless all along!
2 comments:
Oh, I'm right there with you, in the winter of my discontent, hehe.
But perspective is everything, like you said. If we really stop to think about it, we have so much to be thankful for, and we can always find someone else who has it seemingly worse than we do. God is good in every circumstance!
How well I know this feeling! The same-old-same-old wears ruts in my mind, and I stop feeling the wonder of just being alive....not to mention redeemed.
It seems like God has really been hammering me lately with how very important (vital, even) it is for those of us who have the truth, to show it to and share it with the rest of the world. What better way, as you pointed out, to break up the monotony of life? We really have no excuse to be bored with life--our callings, as women and as Christians, are so broad, so high, and so exciting! For my part, all I really need is to start thinking outside the box, pray intensively, trust, take a deep breath, and dive in. (Oh....is that all?...eep.)
I check in on your blog periodically, but, to my shame, never comment. That will change. Thank you for writing, and please keep it up--you inspire me!
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