So in a way, musings like these have purpose. Or at least challenges I can benefit from.
Twenty years from now I imagine I’m going to feel like I missed out on something profoundly heartfelt when I look back on this pivotal scenario and the way it played out. Even if I loosen my grip long enough to steal an introspective moment out on the balcony, somehow I believe I’ll catch myself thinking, “I wish I’d been more assertive!” instead of idly letting life play out scene-by-scene in front of me. Maybe that’s just pre-concerted apathy but my brain tends to harbor some deep-rooted necessity to keep reminding me that this fateful meeting could happen at any moment (and of course it could) but more importantly, that I be ready and waiting in the wings to handle it the way I’ve already anticipated.
It’s annoying but I’m so glad it doesn’t work like this. The caveat is that there’s NOTHING to be ANTICIPATED, or rather, it’s not my job to worry about it.
Call it the common dwellings of reticent people but at the end of the day, it’s all smoke and mirrors. My mind is a house standing against a background of sheltering trees that cannot protect it from every whip of wind that bends quasi-romantic intellectual faculties into deviations of straight lines; rigid projections of backbones that show signs of curving or arcing over time.
But I don’t worry about it.
But more than this, I’m deeply comforted to know that no amount of absentminded woolgathering can reconstruct “the plan” into something that I must practice or rehearse for, even if I wanted to. It will be unplanned, unpremeditated, extempore, unconstrained, unforced, and the thought becomes more beautiful the more I think about it (or perhaps the more I try not to).
Above and beyond all of this, I take great joy and comfort in knowing my Savior has it all blueprinted and planned down to the tiniest detail, and that my job isn’t to blubber and worry about the design – but to hush. To be concerned with the principles of morality, servanthood, discipleship and character, and ultimately, to trust.
For what is faith without trust?
The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.
By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth."
PSALM 33:4-6