What I forget

I don't do a very good job of predicting the future. Not in big things; not in small things. For instance, every time I think, "Hey, I'll have time/energy/lots to say and will get a new blog post up," something comes and takes the wind out of my sails. I guess I am rather easy to deflate these days. Time I have. A desire to share what's on my heart I have. The ability to know how to do that, I don't.

Dan and I were talking last night, and I realized that one of my self-preservation mechanisms is working overtime. That is, as badly as I want and need people to socialize with, and as rapidly and drastically as my social circle has shrunk lately (talking to people at work online was a huge part of my contact with the outside world), I think I am uniquely reluctant to make any connections. This has been true since we moved to North Carolina to some extent, but it has become worse in the last two or three months. I think this is largely because I don't know where we will live in a month, and I am so afraid of letting people down and losing new connections that I don't want to connect with anyone new. This means I don't want to go to church here, either. We've been so busy with moving and guests and other impediments large and small that it has been very easy just to not go. I don't want to volunteer, even though I am sure there are plenty of volunteer organizations in the area that could use hands. The future is so uncertain that I feel paralyzed in the present.

It's all very silly, I know. Especially for someone as naturally social as I can be. I talk easily with people, as evidenced by what happened this last weekend when Dan and I went to Raleigh for a free Hurricane's hockey event. We were sitting in line (it was a long line and we brought chairs) to get into the building for player autographs. The sun was intense in the line area, and I was sans sunscreen, so Dan suggested that I go sit on some nearby steps that were in the shade of the building. I took his suggestion and my book and plopped down on the stairs. I had been there about 3 minutes when a woman came and sat near me and started talking with me about her two passions: writing (she has self-published a novel) and the Hurricanes Booster Club (she's on the club's board). By the time I left that spot, I knew quite a few things about her and may have had a new connection, except that I counted the hours between my current home and the club activities she mentioned that I could really enjoy and decided a bit sadly that it wasn't for me. It's not hard for me to make connections. It's just hard to want to maintain them when my life is in flux and I don't know where I live or what I will do for a living in a month or two.

I find the same reluctance in my job and housing search. Both have been fairly anemic so far, in part because until Dan is hired solidly by his company and until we know what his job will offer by way of benefits and pay, I don't know where I want to live and what sort of job I will need going forward. Can I take a lower-pay part-time position? Do I need a full-time position with benefits? Where should I look? Near where we live now? Near where we left, since that's where I would rather be if Dan's job falls through? I have a deep longing to be settled, to have my familiar things around me. I don't like sitting on someone else's furniture every day and cooking with strange dishes. I want to feel like I have a home again, and I can't bring myself to feel that here, even as I spend more of my time "keeping house".

There is a bitter sweetness to my life in this moment. I am happier in some ways than I have been in many years. In others, I am more depressed than I have been for a long time. It's no mystery to me why I feel either way, or both ways. All of the little gains and losses of life add up to one big muddle, and until I feel a strong sense of direction, I fear I will feel that I have lost my moorings.

The most ridiculous aspect of all of this is that I have sometimes lost sight of what makes this time of life no different from any other, namely that I am never in control, and I never know what the future holds. Every aspect of my life can change in a moment, and greater chaos than I feel now can come at the most routine of times. What does that mean? Well, all that I am feeling is subjective. I'm enslaved to the whim of the moment, the latest bit of news, the newest change of circumstance. I lose sight of the fact that God is unchanging in his love, and that while I may allow myself to be tossed about by circumstance, a firm foundation is withing reach if I dare to put down roots. I'd like to, and I need to... but I am afraid to try.