I am sitting in a Panera this afternoon, writing away at my dissertation. In just two hours, I have added 10 completely new pages to my work. The juices are flowing. The writing seems easy, and bright. I am, as they say, in the groove.
Not so this morning. This morning I sat to revise my Chapter 3 and found, despite my highly detailed outline and notes to remind me of the changes I wanted to make, that I couldn't even begin. I sat for a while. Made some more notes. Checked Facebook. Checked email. Checked Facebook again. Decided to re-organize my jewelry box. Purged a bunch of things from my wallet. Sat in the sun. Read a book.
I will write later, I told myself. After my Physical Therapy appointment. I wasn't anxious. I felt like I was trusting for "it" to come, and I had given "it" a reasonable deadline--after getting treated for vertigo at noon, I would come here to Panera, and "it" would show up. I was quietly confident.
And it did show up. Actually, it happened before I even reached PT--in the car, on the way to the appointment, I didn't realize I was even thinking of my dissertation, and I suddenly realized exactly how I wanted to begin the chapter, and why. It was a beautiful insight, and it had come from...?
Last night I had a very, very rare night out with two very, very dear friends. (I promise this is all related). I've talked about these friends on this blog before; they are two moms who both have children with special needs--Cystic Fibrosis and Down syndrome and autism and PTSD are all in the mix when we get together. IEPs and doctor's visits and surgeries and therapists and lives that are too often very, very interrupted. We are exhausted, we sometimes make ourselves miserable with our complaints, and we vent loudly and with a lot of laughter (and irony), always over drinks. These meetings are always, always exactly what I need.
We talked for nearly 5 hours, and much of our conversation was, as usual, about God. I always stumble across some new idea, some new spiritual help, in talking with these ladies, who are so gut-wrenchingly honest about their own lives and struggles in faith. We talked a lot last night about this paradox: How do we find spiritual rest (or surrender, if you prefer) while also managing and juggling tedious schedules and demanding emergencies and awful crises? How do we trust that God is wildly in love with us and that we--and the kids we love--are seen and provided for, while also having responsibility for the phone calls and the research of the latest therapies and the decisions about what's next for our families?
Last night we had a lot of interesting things to say about this. But just now, while writing my dissertation, I thought of a metaphor I heard at church recently: We are sailboats, each unique from the other, but sharing a great and beautiful sea. God is the wind. Our job is to raise our sails, so to speak, to do this little bit of sail raising while profoundly (and, I think, somewhat desperately) keeping in our souls a quiet trust that what is most needed is a great and beautiful Spirit-wind. Without this Love, we are sailboats that get nowhere, stuck out there at sea in our fears and neuroses and our refusals to trust that we are being sought.
Today in my writing--and maybe this is why I love writing so much, because the practice of it metaphorizes for me again and again what I still struggle to capture in the living of so much of the rest of my life--I raised my sails, and Grace caught them, and I leaned with my back out over the ocean, grasping the rope of faith, and felt as if I were flying.
Was I working hard? Yes. Did I feel I was making a great and exhausting effort? Not at all.
This, it seems to me, is the sweet spot that those of us who long to live a life with and in God desire. We long to raise our sails and trust that the winds of Love are on their way. We long to feel that effortless sense of flying and being resourced. We long to experience a God we cannot see.
Mostly I live my life as a sailboat with its sails down, oars in hand, paddling as hard as I can with my own strength of personality or mind or body. This eventually wears me down. Today the lesson is: Put up the sails and wait. Be anxious for nothing, because you are seen, and the winds are on its way. In writing I find I can work-as-trust in a way I am still learning to do in my non-academic life. But for today, at least, I am wise enough to put down the oars. Today I raise the sails and trust for Wind.
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