Do you ever listen to music that makes you sad because it takes you back in time? Tonight, Tim put on some old worship songs that were new-ish the last time we consistently worshiped God in a corporate church setting. Think, Chris Tomlin 10 years ago. Songs I forgot I knew. Suddenly, we’re harmonizing in our kitchen, singing songs about a God my children haven’t had hammered into their heads and hearts since birth. I wonder if they thought it was weird we were suddenly singing about Jesus.
I’ve changed so much in the last 10 years. I’m not looking to be Kristy circa 2010. But there’s something in my subconscious that remembers her heart in a visceral way when those lyrics start coming out of my mouth. I miss singing with my husband. I miss feeling so deeply. I miss the certainty I used to feel. The music immediately made me contemplative and sad and ready to write again. It’s been a minute since I’ve given myself space and time to be an artist, the writer that I am. I’ve been busy and overtaxed and working and doing school. Sometimes reflection feels like a luxury.
I feel myself being pulled towards new endeavors. This year has been a time of transition. I became my parents’ business partner and took on a fairly weighty part-time leadership position at the YMCA. I graduate from my grad program in May. I’ve started recording a podcast (you’ll hear all about it when it gets closer to being released)! Both of the girls started new schools this year. We’ve traveled a lot for fun and school and work. In all of this, I’ve been curious to see how things will play out for me. I’ve been interviewing. I’ve been in talks with Tim about what he is or isn’t willing to do for my career (neither of us is looking to move). Though this process has been months long, it took until this afternoon for me to acknowledge that the “not knowing-ness” of all of this is actually pretty hard for me. I can adapt to almost any change, but the waiting for answers part is hard for me. I just want to know what’s coming. I’m in a season where it’s harder to be the planner I instinctively am.
For a few years, I dabbled with becoming a person who thought that God was not involved in the minutia of these things. Why would the Creator care about how I spend my working hours? Why are Americans so obsessed with ourselves? I know the individualistic, self-absorbed narrative is bullshit. And yet. These songs still slip out of my mouth. There is a fractured part of me longing to reemerge - clean, new, different. But no longer severed, no longer cast out. Is there a way to hold the tension of my own ego and the reality that the Spirit of God is among us, moving and working? Not in one cosmic plan obsessed with individual vanity and selfish gain, not one obsessed with consequences of a hell fire I pray doesn’t even exist, but in a dance that draws all of the cosmos to redemption and freedom and grace? Dare I affirm that my life might be part of that? Again, not in a way that makes me special or different, but in the very possible reality that God offers participation in his kingdom now…not one that’s looking to condemn everyone around me but one that is manifesting real, embodied hope? I wonder.