How do I make it okay?
Can you visualize the cartoon character that is running and suddenly realizes they are no longer on the ground just suspended in mid-air? Sometimes they’re lucky and they can sneak back to land, while another may just fall “splat” to the ground.
I feel that way now, suspended in mid-air. I’m not sure I can reach the ledge, but I’m not ready to fall “”splat” to the ground either. So how do I make it okay?
As we sit during this time of waiting, how do I make it okay? I am lucky enough to have a job, to take me off the campus daily. Doug on the other hand, does not. During this transition he is working back in the IT world for the seminary, a necessary choice, if not what he really wants to do. Without that I’m not sure where we would live. He could not have predicted this and we are lucky for this opportunity.
But I must ask, why are we waiting? I’m not sure why this has been such a difficult journey for me. Maybe that is why we sit. Maybe there is something else for me to learn. Maybe, this is just how it is with no rhyme or reason.
We are entering that difficult time of seminary life, as we once again say good-bye and God speed to those who have been ordained and moving on. We are not the only ones who sit in wait, but we are one of the few with no clue of whats next. Or how long we will be here?
I am at loss. I don’t know how to make it okay. I don’t know who to ask. I hear this graduating class, has not gone as smoothly as other classes. Some have been released from the original assignment. Some have not even been in conversation with their bishop, and wont be until the fall. Yet still others have been ordained, soon to be ordained, interviewing or waiting for the vote to be accepted. Here we still wait.
I am human. It is hard to not be jealous, angry and scared. The words “trust the process”, still ring in my ears. Well guess what, to me this process has no rhyme or reason. I’m trying to erase the phrase “trust the process” and replace it with “Trust in God”, but I struggle with that too. What are we not doing, that we should be doing? How do we make this okay?
At a recent ordination, this was one of the readings:
Genesis 32:22-32 New International Version (NIV)
Jacob Wrestles With God
22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel,[a] because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”
29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”
But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.
30 So Jacob called the place Peniel,[b] saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”
31 The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel,[c] and he was limping because of his hip. 32 Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon.
The bishop later brought this reading into her sermon. She had asked the women being ordained “how is your hip?” she proceed to break down the reading in a way that I could relate to. I’m hoping now, it will help me through this time of transition.
For those who read this I ask for continued prayers. I thank you for letting me babble, with the hope of one day writing something that is fun, full of life and laughter.
So how is my hip? I’m learning to walk with a limp. How do I make this okay?