My thoughts are swirly. I wish I could communicate clearly the discombobulation and calm and questions and static that fills my mind these days. I feel like a snow globe. Easily disturbed into chaos, floating in the same spaces, falling to rest momentarily onto the fake permanence below. Maybe a little different but mostly still stuck.
I’ve written at least two, three drafts now about how to think about money. I’ve been reading about what makes a healthy mindset or philosophy or Christian theology regarding money. How we think about money determines how we act with money. I’m trying to figure out what I think, what I feel, what I hope. I feel I must clarify what I believe so I might discern how I should act. Meanwhile, life keeps happening and the snow globe gets jostled. I notified my students I would no longer teach piano. Flit flit flutter flutter. Spent the weekend at a Women’s Retreat trying to get comfortable answering, “So now what?” with “I don’t know.” Spin turn spin. Rachel Held Evans dies and whoosh! There goes everything.
I overcommitted myself this year and many of these commitments end soon and I am notifying people what I will not continue. “Oh, okay. So what are you doing?” “I don’t know.” Awkward silence. Swirly brain.
For months now, when I see friends and we chat about what’s going on, I will genuinely forget large portions of my life. How are you? Good. Busy. I’ve been helping out our MOPS group and taking care of the kids as usual. I’m serving with our church’s children’s ministry and doing some DoTERRA stuff. Then, after 15 minutes of me rambling on they’ll ask, So are you still teaching piano? Oh! Yeah, I am. I forgot. Also, I’m writing now. Oh, geez, and I’m gonna be commissioned as a Stephen Minister. I forgot. I forgot. And the snow globe snow churns around and I wonder if I’ve forgotten something or someone important. I also have this niggling suspicion that the distractions are intentional and that right thought is not a mandatory prerequisite for right action.
I never met Rachel Held Evans, often referred to online as RHE. I’ve read some of her books and much of her blog and followed her on Twitter. I’m surprised at how much it hurts to know she died. Others have written much better than I about how and why she spoke for a generation. Her writing, her advocacy, her speaking, her generosity, her character impacted thousands. Maybe millions. Twitter trended with #becauseofRHE and we wept, us unknown women and men whom she inspired. She made us feel beloved. She spoke words I was afraid to say and to trust. She asked questions with no easy answers. She loved when it was risky to do so.
Because of her I want to write well, be bolder, to speak love into the dark places. I want my life to be about loving others so that we might all be a little more free, a little more kind.
I was reading Psalm 23 and heard v. 3b-4a a little differently this time. “He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me.” In the past, this has always sounded like God guides us to right paths, and we associate those paths with the green pastures and still waters of verse 2, not the difficulty of verse 4. The path through the darkest valleys always seems like where we wander, away from the right path, but never fear, God is near. This time I see that sometimes the right path is the one through the darkest valley. The valley of the shadow of death.
In John 10, Jesus says he is the gate and the good shepherd. He leads and we follow His voice. The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, but the voice of Jesus, the life of Jesus, the way of Jesus, leads to life, abundant. Through him, we may go out. And we may come in. We may find pasture. This kind of life, listening to the voice of God, makes Psalm 23:6 happen. The result, the benefit of keeping our eyes on Jesus, of obedience to his voice means goodness and mercy shall follow me like the wake of a boat. RHE had a wide wake and the world is a better place because of her. May the goodness and mercy her life produced ripple out through the generations.
