Back to life

I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. -Romans 7:18b

We keep a wall calendar in our kitchen, to have artwork as well as a graphical shape for each month. It’s not our “real” calendar, but one where we (I) add block-type things… travel, day-long meetings, semester starts and stops. For January 3, I put, “Back to real life.”

And then I haven’t. Gone back to real life, that is. My Sweetie has–there’s nothing like the structure of a day job–but while some of my usual schedule’s back, most of it’s not. Naturally, I have been scolding myself all week. In my current life of why?/why not? I can’t point to anything that would have stopped me. Yet here we are, as Edna Mode would say.

Today I woke with “Wait For It” ringing through my head. From the moment I heard Les Odam Jr. singing it from stage, it has been the Hamilton song I identify with. But I couldn’t put my finger on why, exactly, this song stuck to me.

Well, there’s the “wait” part, certainly. My most consistent message from God during my adult life has been to wait. Something is coming. Something that matters. But not yet. The timing is not in your (my) hands.

Wait. Which I take to mean “hold still,” or “listen,” or simply “pause with non-anxious presence.” I have struggled mightily with this, and have regularly fallen far short. I don’t think I’m pushing for outcomes, or driving ahead per se. But  maintaining an interior–a brain–that is calm and at peace eludes me.

As I was tapping my toe to the rhythm in my brain this morning, I had a hard time sitting still. And I said: Oh. That’s why this song feels like my song.

This is not a peaceful waiting. This is intensity on an incredibly strong leash.

And that I have learned to do over the past decade and a half. Ways of running my Jaguar mind–how to idle it and for how long, ways of downshifting and upshifting, how to keep it out of the shop and on the road.

I’ve learned I can, however imperfectly, wait for it. I can maintain a non-anxious presence. I can watch for the unfolding around me, even as my engine hums in the background.

I very much want the sweet click of, “Yes; this is what I’m meant to do.” But in the meantime, “Goddammit I’m willing to–”

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