ready to refocus

sometimes it seems that just when you think you've got it right, someone goes and throws a spoke in your wheels. john mayer has this song called "something's missing." here's my version of his last verse: friends--check. health--check. job--check. house--check. family--check. church--half-check. opposite sex--well... okay, point of the song being that sometimes you can have all your ducks in a row, but something is still missing.

i'm filled with this incredible angst some days--not a feeling of fear, just one of anticipation and uncertainty, like i'm on the edge of something great, like something big is about to happen. i don't know what that could be--there are a lot of things that are about to happen, that could happen as i live in this liminal stage that is grad school. maybe the liminality is what causes the angst--caught somewhere between school and career, between child and adult, between the faith i've been taught and the faith i must come to own. it's like i've been given a small glimpse, a taste of the world and the life that i might live one day but i'm still caught in the process of getting there. it's an assurance that i'm on the right track, but sometimes all the reading and the class or two that i'm not really interested in taking makes me feel as though i'm wading through this swamp of molasses. it's slowing me down. isn't that strange though? that's why i'm here--classes and school and writing. and i do still enjoy it, and maybe i'm still just settling back in. maybe i've gotten too focused on all that is waiting on the other side, in the midst of my ordination decisions and class discussions about call, so i start to forget that my education is not a means to end. it's a beautiful, self-forming journey of thought, refinement, and discovery.

and wouldn't you know that the first thing that goes out the window is my personal spiritual discipline. where is God in seminary? you can't assume that God's there. several times over the course of our opening weeks here, deans and professors told us that our time at Candler is a time to focusing on the loving of God with our minds. for awhile there, i was commited to that idea--i'm going to throw myself into my studies at the expense of all else and that will be my worship even if i don't feel as connected to God, as passionate about my faith. fortunately, the revelation that that is not going to work came quickly enough. Love of God, like love for others, is holistic. yes, the mind is the focus of school, but that cannot continue to be at the complete expense of the heart, the soul, the strength. it's causing me to lose who i am. it's no wonder that i've been doubting my self-worth and moping about and using more curse words that i ever have before ;) last night at church we heard a sermon on the exodus, and what really stuck with me was this idea of remembrance--being in Scripture as a way to remind us of all that God hass done so that our hope can be in Him even in times of struggle or doubt or fear. i need to remember what God has done both in my life and in the life of our corporate faith story. and then LAST week at church (i think i may have found a good one, huh?) the speaker posed the biblical question, what good is it to gain the whole world yet forfeit your soul? that became for me a question of, what good is it to gain the whole world that seminary has to offer, yet forfeit my soul? i have been letting my personal faith, my spirit suffer at the expense of this seminary world with all its appeal and bells and whistles. BUT studying God is not knowing God.

hmm, all this goes to say that i am, as ever, continuing to reinvent myself, to define who i am as a daughter of God and as one called to the ministry. again, i've only been here for a month and a half, so i don't know if this angst and this spiritual wandering will continue or if i'll snap out of it and commit myself to what's really important. will i be refined by fire? almost certainly, yes. as long as i don't leave this place as the same person that came in. and hopefully, that'll be for the better.