Today, cleaning out some old books, I stumbled on a journal from five years ago.
I had missed it in prior cleanings because I filled out only a small quarter of the pages: I started it with a resolution, as written, to develop a daily prayer and reflection routine that would turn me from my focus on anxiety to a renewed focus on and faith in God.
Forty-five pages later, the last journal entry is ashes, embers, and grief.
I read as my entries moved from the perky (“God, I’m so privileged to write and think about you today!”) to the determined (“God, even though I feel fear, I will turn my trust to you”) to the desolate (“WHAT IS GOING ON, AND WHY IS NOTHING SOLID?” written in scratchy, furious script that spills over one entire page).
As I reviewed the entries, I remembered: my aunt had been dying a slow death of cancer, at the time. My beloved cousin, her son, had literally vanished in the grip of addiction and could not be reached. My mom and I were arguing. My car broke down. I lost my job and had to take a new one: a prospect that, at the time, felt like the absolute destruction of all my hopes and dreams.
Of course, from my vantage point five years later, matters look…different.
The job that I thought would ruin me has been the key to many of the dreams I assumed it would destroy. My aunt did pass, but with her face turned to heaven; God restored my cousin to us. Many blessings came. Much I feared did not come to pass.
But much I didn’t know to fear did pass. The writer bewailing her broken-down car could not have imagined her mother being diagnosed with cancer during a worldwide pandemic that brought life as she knew it to a standstill; could not have imagined her mother recovering from that, being diagnosed again, and passing away; could not conceive either of the hurts or the joys I have known over that span.
I don’t know what to make of it all except this: I am always so desperate to see the big picture.
My journals portray a desperate desire, always, to see how things will play out in the long run. I am always asking God why this thing is or isn’t happening, what will or won’t come of it, fretting over consequences and implications, what may be, what ought to be. I am always wondering: what does this mean, long-term? How is this going to go?
In Following Jesus by Henri Nouwen, which I have been reading of late, Nouwen writes offhandedly that:
All the great people of in history started with little steps. St. Francis of Assisi didn’t suddenly rip off his clothes and move to a cave. It was four years of struggling and taking little steps. […] Be very aware. You know exactly what you have to do tonight. You also know what you have to do tomorrow. You also know what you don’t need to do. You have to trust that if you take these steps of faithfulness in your thinking, in your speaking, in your acting, you can make a long trip with small steps. You will hear the call louder and louder and know where you are going.”
I never think about the little steps. Or rather, I do, but I dismiss them for my bigger concerns. Because on the surface, the little steps seem to have nothing much to do with the big ones. My little steps for today are something like: do the nice thing for your husband that you don’t need to do but want to do because you love him. Stop indulging malicious gossip about that person you can’t stand. Stop thinking vicious thoughts about that person you don’t like. Send that card to the sick person you know.
Those steps seemingly have very little to do with my bigger concerns. Right now my professional life is in absolute upheaval, one of those clear God-is-moving-the-tables moments when I don’t know where everything will end up. I don’t really care about who’s gossiping or about monitoring my thoughts when, to me, the critical issue is what on earth is going to happen to my career and to me.
But God always emphasizes the who over the what.
And in the making of the who, through those little steps, the what will sort itself out. Somehow. Because that was the other reminder my journal left me: I have so very little control over what will and won’t happen. Life just is. It unfolds; God moves; I adapt.
Nouwen also writes in Following Jesus that God is always with us in the now: that God is not waiting for the next-best thing. God is here in this moment, doing something, working the fullness of His will in the time I wish was past.
Little steps are what bring me to that realization. I have no idea what God is doing with my career! For all I know I’m going to Thelma-and-Louise my entire professional life over a cliff at any moment. But in this moment God is doing things that to God are of equal value: teaching me to be a person who learns to think with love as well as to act with love. Teaching me to discipline myself. Teaching me to trust.
Part of the current career upheaval is that I am in the middle of a current career opportunity that I was offered about six or so months ago. Recently I joked to my husband, “If I had known then what was coming, I’d never have said yes.” I have to do things I did not expect; learn skills I did not have; perform in situations that are utterly alien to me.
I never conceived of myself—still don’t—as the person who could do those things. Instead, one small step led to many other small steps and somewhere in the stepping I became a person who could. The small led to the large, and even now the small steps are leading…somewhere.
Where? Only God knows.
And I can finally realize: that’s kind of the whole point.
Samaritan's Song 