"Now is your time. Become, believe, try. Walk closely with people you love, and with other people who believe that God is good and life is a grand adventure. Don't spend time with people who make you feel like less than you are. Don't get stuck in the past, and don't try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven't yet earned. Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life's path"
-Shauna Niequist
So often I pick up my worn copy of Bittersweet looking for inspiration and affirmation that sometimes life really sucks but when you can live in that and be able to find joy in that then you can see just how much beauty there is around you. This year my heart has continually pulled me back to this passage, to this idea of becoming. In the past I've walked through life just waiting for that moment, for things to click, for me to get it and to have it all figured out. I moved to Los Angeles after college searching for that and a year later found myself at my parents in the Bay Area even further from it than before. I spent the first half of my year unhappy and frustrated that life wasn't working out the way I'd always envisioned it, that I didn't have it together yet. I lost myself in that, I became a lesser version of the woman that I am because I was so consumed with what I didn't have.
My turning point and the slow process out of my slump was when a wise friend stopped me mid conversation and told me that I need to learn to "just be." This idea was something that was so foreign to me, my mind has always been where I wasn't and about a million steps ahead of me. It has taken a lot of discipline, and I still have days where it doesn't work out so well, but for the most part I've been able to just be. In doing that, I have learned to value the person that I am and the process of becoming. I learned things that I never expected to learn this year, I experienced heartbreak, loneliness, life giving friendships and beautiful support from my amazing family. Most importantly though, I learned and accepted that this process of becoming isn't something that is going to end as I step into my next chapter, life is a season of becoming, and when we can find beauty in that truth that is when we can learn what it truly means to live.
I like the concept of "Just Be." It's so hard to get there, though. We're both at a point in our lives when things are simultaneously flying ahead of us and yet moving at a mind-numbingly slow pace. Things were supposed to be simpler after graduation. Sometimes it feels like slamming your head against a brick wall would have a better effect.
ReplyDeletePS. I hope you don't mind me following your blog.