Post-Grad School Angst

I feel let down. It seems I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. After investing three years of my life (and finances) into grad school, I’m now wondering if it all wasn’t just some siren song calling to me to greener grass just to dash me on the rocks. I guess this is what they call the divine discontent. Holy frustration that leads me to the truth that my hope has been misplaced. Again.

I don’t regret going to grad school (of course I haven’t started paying back my loans yet either). I guess I just thought it would be different on the other side—that I would be someone else maybe. And I am, in some ways. But life is still hard and confusing, and I’m still not who I want to be. I thought I’d be perfect by now. How disappointing.

I hear this is a common feeling for post-graduates. Maybe it’s common for anyone who has worked hard to get something or get somewhere only to realize it’s still not enough. It reminds me of what my professor said, that frustration is built into our lives on purpose by God to lead us to him—our Source. It’s part of the curse. To lead us to freedom and rest and true hope (Romans 8:20-21). We won’t find what we’re looking for until we look to God.

And yet before I get there I always seem to have to spend myself trying to avoid the curse, mad at God for not giving me what I want and irritated that he’s more concerned with what I need. Until I’m exhausted enough to let him work.

“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”  St. Augustine

Until Then

Death loss
is not what I thought, not what they taught. Yes, it’s grief
and tragedy. It’s sadness and sympathy.
But not so much over
your death
as over

your life

that I didn’t know,

that you never showed,

that maybe no one knew,

not even you.

All your greatness, hidden by shame.
All your heartbreak, hidden with blame.
All in ashes. Only worn out jokes and guitars remain.
Nothing risked, but all is stained.

I wonder if now you see clearly, and what you would say
now that you see, and who you would be
now that you’re free, and how things would be different
back then if you had not been

hidden.

But I’ll see you again.
Until then
I miss you, Dad. I always have.

Deep Calls to Deep

I prefer to write about innocuous truth. You know, then I don’t have to get naked.

But perhaps the truest thing about us is the most personal, the most vulnerable—our desire to connect and be known. I tend to be pretty ambivalent about it, really. But then at times, I am ambushed by that desire so powerfully that I have to confront it. Last night was such a time.

Often for me, like last night, it comes after spending time in community when no true knowing has taken place. Conversations about food, the economy, and the weather are paramount. And we all remain unknown. And safe. And then boom. Suddenly I want to do something self-destructive and reckless, like an angsty teenager. I feel unsatisfied and restless.

I wonder, if we could all just learn to recognize and name that longing, a longing for intimacy, how much senseless tragedy would be reduced. Would there be less drunk driving, less affairs, less eating-disorders, less suicide? Probably not. Because awareness doesn’t fix the problem. We’d still be unsatisfied—we’d just know why—we’re not getting our deepest need met. So, what do we do with the problem of deep desire?

There’s the obvious choice: repression. Don’t feel, don’t desire. Keep busy. Self-preservation. Seems to be the thing in our culture. I even feel weird writing this because I’d rather play it cool or make a joke—that’s how my family has dealt with it. Laugh it off. But then, the truest thing about you dies.

Then there’s the option of trying to get that need met in counterfeit and harmful ways, or trying to force others to meet that need for you. Addiction. Manipulation. Come to think of it, that’s my family too. And this is what I have seen most often in the therapy office. The aftermath of it, that is.

To be honest, I don’t even think most of us know how to connect or be known. It’s freaking scary—to be known. Most of us opt out. We push people away or hold them off in so many ways, but mostly we just don’t know how. What if we all confessed that we have this deep desire that’s not being met? Would it be okay to talk about? Because if we start talking about our deepest desire, there’s a chance we might begin to feel known.

But it seems to me that this desire can be so deep that I could eat and eat and drink and drink and never get enough. I think we have to learn to live with this desire—to let it be the symptom that tells us we are alive and part of the struggling human race, and let it lead us to the recognition that we are far from home. It is a homesickness that touches us when things are not as they should be, or when it feels like home here. In pains and pleasures, the deep calls, reminding us of the truest thing about us. And really, the call is to risk being known now, as we are, naked.

"Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me." from Psalm 42

Ambition Redeemed

When it comes to telling a better story, questions of control and sovereignty and ambition tend to arise for me. So, starting to read Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy has been well-timed to allow the Truth to ease in and dazzle gradually. It’s helping me understand that striving isn’t all bad.

I often wonder how selfish I’m being when it comes to pursuing my desires and ambitions. To be honest, I prefer to call it selfish so I can defer and hand off responsibility and control. Then I can blame someone else (God) when disappointment and failure come. I can be passive and live safely and call it holiness—much easier.

I’m not a very ambitious person, really. I just want to change the world. Not much. So, I’ve been on this quest to figure out if world-changers just stumble upon it as they react to life as it comes (preferred) or if they actually set out with intention and ambition (more likely, dang it). It seems I might have to risk. All of this is wrapped up with complex ideas about expectations and limitations and grace and humanity and failure and fear and potential. I’ll write a book about it one day that will change the world…

For now, it’s enough to know I’m normal. Willard says so. We’re not intended to be ordinary. “Everyone, from the smallest child to the oldest adult, naturally wants in some way to be extraordinary, outstanding, making a unique contribution…” He says the drive to significance is “a signal of who we are and why we’re here.” But it is not the same as egotism, which is what I didn’t get. He describes egotism as “acute self-consciousness and can be prevented and healed only by the experience of being adequately loved.”

But egotism is often what striving and ambition has been for me. Striving without love is ugly. Brennan Manning painted this dirty little portrait of me, “When… the impostor is running amok, and I am thinking how well I have done and how necessary I am and how secure I feel in the affirmation of others and how remarkable that I have become a player in the religion thing and how deserving I am of an exotic vacation and how proud my family is of me and how glorious the future looks—suddenly, like mist rising from the fields, I am … afraid. I know that behind all my Christian slogans and conversations… there lurks a very frightened man… I have escaped into the fantasy of invincibility.”

But that egotism (and fear) is healed by the experience of being adequately loved. So, if I let God heal me with his love, then I have the freedom to dream and strive as I was meant to—to create a better story, to be ambitious, to change the world. I will risk when I’m loved.

The Loss of Living Here

We lose a lot of who we are when we learn to live in this world.

We can’t fully be who we were designed to be here. We teach little ones the ways of the world, and they learn quickly which parts of who they are will not be acceptable here. A lot of it is necessary, but there’s no doubt we all get squashed in order to live here. The truly free will have a hard time here.

We all start off quirky. Some adapt better than others. Some, like me, bow to the gods of status quo and become very likeable to nearly everyone by sacrificing distinctiveness. Lately I’ve been watching my three-year-old niece, who is a lot like me in nearly every way, and wondering what I’ve lost—what she’ll lose.

She is so full of life and energy and excitement. It’s a lot to handle sometimes. So we tell her the rules of living in the world. You can’t be like that, have to be more this, less that. Granted, the manipulative and depraved nature that I know in myself comes out in her and needs to be squelched—in all of us. But so much of our original design gets lost in the fray as we learn to fit, to be accepted, to remain sane, to not get hurt, to pay our bills, to be responsible, to not annoy our aunt.

I mean, I have to tell her the rules. You know, ones like “no excited, non-stop talking before 8 am.” It’s a necessary rule (to protect us both), but I feel a little bit of who she is slipping away when her big smile fades. I don’t know how long she stands by my bed waiting for me to wake up when she stays overnight with me, but when I open my eyes that big smile is there and she’s ready to explode all of who she is on me before I’m quite awake.

But to live here, in this world, we have to tell them who they can and cannot be. We all learned it. Your animated displays of emotion are not going to work out here. The face you make when you’re thinking is going to make your life difficult. Your fondness for incessant hugging is not going to be appreciated here...

The Human World has some universal rules, but there are also different rules for different worlds. Church World. American World. Suburbia World. Disney World. Sometimes it’s hard to know which rules to follow. Which status quo am I aiming for? Weird Portlander? Or proper southerner? Nice church girl? Or unconventional revolutionary? So, we end up just trying to create an identity based on the cues we’ve been given in the world we're in.

Won’t it be beautiful when we’re all finally free of the rules of this world? Free to be who we were created to be without concern for the rules of living far from home? I am moving closer to a taste of that freedom now, but I look forward to the day when I arrive and find out who I am really. And who you are.

our life outside the garden

so strange
what we lost
that day
not like
what we found
so familiar
these fig-leaf burdens
carried on crooked backs
that seem straight
for so long
staring at the ground
that feels like home
makes it hard to turn around
toward what we lost
that day
so strange

Sehnsucht: A Lament

I want
all the time

I stopped wanting once
maybe
But it didn’t last long

Is wanting wrong?
That’s what I’m told
sometimes when
I want

But I was made
to want
really
Made hungry and thirsty and needy

Then the damned fall
And now I don’t get what
I want
And don’t know what
I want
really

And even when I get
I want
And even when I drink
I thirst
And even when I eat
I hunger
And even when I love
I want
And don’t get
enough
And never will
really

Until the end
Until Eden

Until then
I want

Far From Home

Only a remnant of our royalty remains.
Now daughters of the King
roam like desperate beggars
in a foreign land.
Homesick—
forgetting who we are.
Searching for sustenance
in a wasteland.
Impatient in hope
for the palace prepared.
Frustrated from futility
brought by the bondage of decay.
Drawn to doubt the glorious freedom
the King’s children receive.
Wait, O daughters!
Persist, you sisters in slavery!
For our betrothed nears,
and he will cleanse the stains of vagrancy.
He will clothe us anew
with splendor profound.
We will feast with him,
feast from the guarded tree
on the day of our new song,
the day of completion.

Hosea 6:3 "Let us acknowledge the LORD; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth."

Balance

Confine passion
Restrain freedom
Tame obsession
Repress desire
Indulge moderation
Create Balance
If I were Home I would not need you

Far from Home my
Boundaries become barricades
Vulnerability prostitution
Humility heresy
Certainty pedantic
Holiness dichotomous
Contentment status quo
Failed Balance
When I get Home I will not need you

Love without fear
Commit without caution
Find the Pearl in the Field
Give all to possess it
Scorn Balance
As I glimpse Home I do not want you