fear and apprehension

it's a very strange feeling to have spent so many months looking forward to grad week, and then when it arrived, to think that all of that excitement was overrated after all. stranger still, to go in having been stripped of expectations and then discover that i really enjoyed graduation dinner after all.

lots of people seem to be expecting me to feel exuberant about this next phase of life. truth be told, i'm having real difficulty mustering any real enthusiasm. mostly because the future is looming, and it looks very daunting.

fear and apprehension.

but take heart! for courage is not the absence of fear, but acting in spite of it (Mark Twain).

it is less than 48 hours until we make our oaths.

dissonance

one of the reasons i like traveling is because it takes me away. not just physically, but away from my usual habits and and rituals, away from the things i do to fill my day. away from the life i know, so that i can know more about life.

it's a different box, with different insulators, but they are not mine. what remains lies at the core of what makes us human.

i didn't think it was time yet; this time i was enjoying my numbness, when it was nevertheless smashed around me. and what to do but let that empty space inside of me open up. and it does so, eliminating in the process the things which were not good enough.

and here is the heart of a matter- there is a dissonance between the big picture, and small details. you know what i mean. it's like one of those pictures everybody used to have in high school, where a thousand smaller pictures, seemingly unrelated, make up each shade and gradient of a much larger picture.

how then do we engage in the things which do not matter, without losing sight of the image they form? or perhaps it is instead that everything matters.

i do not know how this puzzle is resolved.

suffering

sometimes we are given storms. sometimes the purifying fire burns, the sculptor's chisel cuts.

the past three weeks have been incredibly difficult for me. at times i cried for the innocence i lost, that naive optimism i once had. wondering desperately if i would -could- ever feel whole and complete again. praying somehow that God would use my suffering for a bigger purpose, one that i perhaps do not yet understand.

to those of you who sat with me as i tried to 'study', who texted randomly to ask me how i was, who called and listened to me express my sorrow, who brought me gifts, who hugged me and told me you loved me, that i was not a moron, and that i worth so much... thank you :) your words meant so much to me. i cried as i read them, then reread them another two times.

In the chaos, in confusion
I know You're Sovereign still
In the moment of my weakness
You give me grace to do Your will

- None but Jesus, Hillsong

surrender

He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” - Matthew 26:42 (NIV)

I find myself arguing with God in the morning. But Jesus never experienced this. Surely you cannot know what this feels like, I say. But as soon as the words form themselves on my lips, I know that I am wrong. For is not Christ the bridegroom, and the church, his bride?

So take me as You find me,
All my fears and failures,
Fill my life again.

I give my life to follow
Everything I believe in
Now I surrender

- Mighty to Save, Hillsong Australia

hope

Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

Proverbs 13:12, NIV

day 5

on the fifth day after major colonic surgery, one must always be on the look out for an anastomotic leak.

i am amazed by the fragility and the resilience of the human psyche in equal measure.