Tapestry: Living vs. Existing

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." - Oscar Wilde

It's been over 6 months since my last post. While I thoroughly enjoyed the hiatus (including the one I took from Facebook), I've developed quite a list of topics I have wanted to blog about. Also, a few southern friends requested I restart the blog so they could keep up with the family. Mom covers the chicken topic enough now, so maybe the reading will be better than before.

For the last few months I've been wrestling with the feeling that I'm just spinning my wheels. I go to work, work 8-9 hours a day at a job I enjoy, come home and try to find something creative for supper, tap out a few words of one of my current stories, and go to bed to start all over again. On the weekends, I sleep in until 7:30, read a book, eat one meal, maybe go to town, and tap out a few more words.

Maybe it's just a phase. I don't really buy into the whole "young people finding themselves" mentality, but perhaps this is just one of those life transitions where I'm finding my rhythm. Maybe.

Something with which I have always struggled is being anxious. By now anyone who has read this blog knows this. I worry too much and over-think things and second-guess myself, and I know a lot of what I'm working through is managing that aspect of my brain. But then I sit still and try to count all the things I accomplished in 2014. It doesn't really amount to much in 10 minutes' hard consideration. Drawing it out, my life is pretty colorless. Again, maybe it's just a stage. Maybe I'm in a quiet place where all I'm supposed to be doing is sitting still and learning, listening, developing. Maybe.

I found the above quote from Mr. Wilde quite a while ago and it often comes to mind when I hit one of these contemplative moods. Much as it scares me to admit, I'm not really living my life so much as muddling through it with as little effort or involvement as possible. I'm so caught up in the personal struggle to find my place, of learning the steps, that I've sunk deeply into myself and blocked pretty much everything else out. (I'll be the first to agree that my social interaction is at a level which is undoubtedly detrimental to my health.)

And then I pop out of that shell, take one look at the world, shiver, and withdraw again. Back to the anxiety.

I know I'm here for a purpose. In my family, in this city, as the particular job I hold, in the certain church where we've found a home. In this time, these circumstances.

Another quote which I hold close is from J. R. R. Tolkien and The Fellowship of the Ring. It's more like my life quote at the moment:

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

God picked me specifically for this location so I could do something for Him. More and more I'm coming to terms with the fact that it may not be very grandiose by the world's standards or even by Christendom's standards. But it's my role. I may be that supporting character who meets one of the key players ten years down the road and has traveled just the right path to know how to nudge them back onto theirs. When I look at it that way, I can't help but get a little giddy.

It's not about finding a springboard to move one from a quiet town to a big adventure. It's about making the most out of whatever circumstances in which one finds oneself. We can't all be world explorers or geniuses or composers. Those people need the clerks and babysitters and nurses. They need the girl behind the phone whose name they can't remember who relieves one small distraction on their plate by informing them that the timeframe they need will work just fine, and who bids them good day with a smile in her voice and doesn't correct them when they get her name wrong again while saying good-bye. (It's not that I'm bitter, but "Amber" is not an unusual name. I can't count the times I've been Amanda, Amy, Andrea, Samantha, or Heather. At this point I just smile and choke down a laugh.)

It is about making what I have been given count in more ways than monetary. It's about loving sleep a little less and hanging out with a lonely friend instead, or meeting for a Bible study. We're here to interact. We're meant to touch, to see, to hear, to speak to, to sing, to guide, to hold. Not to just revel in a sunset, but to glory in Who painted it. Not just to catch our breath after wrestling with a kid, but stopping to read a Bible story and talk about it before helping them crawl into bed. Not just giving candy to an orphan, but the truth as well.

We may not live expansive, bold lives, but we are meant to live on purpose. Wherever we find ourselves, we are meant to make the most out of it for the glory of God.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. - Romans 12:1

It's reasonable, after all God has done for us, for us to surrender our lives to Him.

So this post isn't all I had hoped for it to be. They never are. But I think I've said what I set out to. And here are some other quotes and verses which contributed to the concept: