Walking.

I sometimes take a moment to wonder how I got to where I am now. This moment, a unique and complete set of circumstances, unable to be reproduced or even fully remembered, full of questions and uncertainties, expectations and a strange desire to bake something a little bit surprising. Perhaps I will get to that later.

I am living my dream. Since I can remember, I've wanted to move to Europe after high school and start changing the world at the right hand of God himself. I wanted an espresso-laced adventure to a culture that is partially mine, to see the cynicism and masterful baked goods first-hand. I thought if I were lucky I might even learn how to pull off one of those all-black ensembles with the expensive shoes and the long cigarettes. And above all, it would work out well. I've got European in me, after all. I've lived in other places. My whole life has basically been one big culture shock. (I would like to think that this means that I am not meant for this world, but in real life, I'm probably just a child of a lot of transition and a healthy dose of honest-to-goodness awkwardness.) Moving to Europe was just the next step lest I get too comfortable.

Dreams are sometimes not exactly what you envision them to be. Five months into this adventure, in my fantasy life I am surrounded by my sophisticated European friends who are eager to incorporate me into their context. (In fantasy land, everyone is as eager to make friends with me as I am to make friends with them. I am also still American.) I see the love of my life once every couple of weeks -- long enough for it to sting but not hurt, and not so long that I forget what kissing feels like. I get into my job with absolutely no hassle, everyone in our apartment building smiles and says hello, and I'm really good at making dinner for the many people we are often hosting around the evening hour. Also I'd be suddenly very good at dividing my time into "keeping up with lovely people far away" and "being present with lovely people here now", and the "here" part would be all in grammatically perfect and complex German.

So the reality? I miss my Wheaton life so much that it sometimes hurts. I miss my friends, specifically, and my kitchen, and the proximity of me to the the wise older people of my university days who were eager to pour their insight and wisdom into me until I turned "God's own heart" colored. I am terrible at keeping up with people, to the point that many of the folks that I miss might not even know that I miss them. I am good at cooking and bad at getting people into my house to experience it, and I often question whether or not I am still doing "transition" right. (After so many, you'd think that I'd have it all figured out by now.) 

I have been doing a lot of thinking about God these last five months. I have been doing a lot of thinking about God and the way that we relate to him in everyday life, the way that we encounter him actively and passively. Both are necessary in day-to-day relationship, just like every other "person" who affects us relationally. We never exclusively encounter someone actively. The exception here could be Cleverbot, but I think that aids my thought process here. There's no real relationship with someone if we are only actively interacting. I think through exclusively active encounters one cannot really acknowledge another's personhood. (I like that thought. I might extrapolate on it in another post.) Then again, everyone knows (probably through experience, for many) that you cannot build a relationship through passive interaction. That equally does not acknowledge another. (And it feels BAD.)

Honesty moment: I do not know how to balance active and passive encounters with God. And before well-intentioned readers begin to leave helpful suggestions in the comment box, I'm not sure anyone would benefit from a formula, least of all myself. (I have never taken a single chemistry class for the following reason: Formulas are yucky.) That, I think, would also limit the relationality of God. I am, for one of the first times, taking a walk through life. I am testing the waters of what it means to walk with God at my side. (On the side of God? I won't try to translate that statement into churchically correct lingo.) I am full of questions and doubts. I do not know if I am doing this right. I do know that there is a lot of space between me and my relationship with God in my fantasies where I am ideal in every way. (In that world I still do not like formulas.)

For the first time in my life, I'm in a stage where there's no goal in mind. There's no graduation to look forward to. (There is a wedding though -- this is an exciting thing.) The thing to look forward to is that place up the road a bit, where we are still walking, God and I, but with a little less space between us.

I sometimes take a moment the end of the blog post to wonder how I got to where I am now.

Well, then. Onward.

Current

Sometimes I feel like a rock. Note: not dumb as a rock, heavy as a rock, or blunt as a rock. Though there are certainly times that I'm at least two of those three options. (You can guess which two, though your answer might determine whether or not we'll stay friends.)

However, on this occasion, I feel like a very large, very inconvenient rock placed dead in the middle of a river. A shallow river- a channel? A rivulet? I should have gone camping more often when I was younger. I might know the name of the travelling body of water to which I am referring, and everything is better when it has a name. But I digress- I am a rock in a river.

It's second semester senior year, and my life is full. It's almost time to walk the walk (you know the one). When I was little, I dreamed about being bigger. When I was in middle school, I dreamed about high school and hoped that someday I would fill out my clothes. When I was in high school, I would dream about what college and friends and living away from home would be like. Now that college is almost over, I am left to dream about the next big thing. Unfortunately for people in my situation, that happens to be one of the biggest things there is- the deep and wide and vast universe of adulthood. Luckily, Developmental Psychology recently named my next life stage as that of the "emerging adult", so my many failures will probably be received with grace for a couple years at least.

At the same time, though, part of me feels like I must not be keeping up. Life must have always moved this fast- there's no reason that Time would slow down or speed up depending on my stage of life, and yet it feels like everything and everyone is running, swimming, being carried by the current, and I'm a huge rock in the middle of the river. I don't even have legs. I'm a rock.

Heavens to Betsy. I hope I get some legs soon.