Hope is a tricky thing.
When I was waiting for Mike to fall in love with me, I remember a sermon about Hannah, the mother of Samuel. One time when she prayed, Eli the priest saw her and thought she was drunk. He said, "How long are you going to stay drunk? Put away your wine."
"Not so, my lord," Hannah replied. "I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the Lord." (1 Samuel 1:14-15)
I was also a woman who was deeply troubled. I had fallen in love with Mike, but month after month had gone by with no sign of reciprocation. When I heard Hannah's story, I realized that hope is the hardest place to be. It's like sitting on a fence. If your hope is fulfilled, you can come down on one side of the fence, and if you give up hope, you can come down on the other. But living in hope is a precarious balance.
I am thinking of hope and longing now as I look to my post-graduate future. I am a stay-at-home mom right now, but I long to be involved in ministry, in the leadership and shaping of a church. However, the two roles seem mutually exclusive. I like spending time with my baby boy, and I don't want to relinquish him to daycare. Ministry is a demanding 24-7 job that doesn't have space for nursing a baby every four hours, establishing a daily eating and sleeping routine, and being flexible to change that routine every few months for a growing baby.
Yet I long to be part of a community of Christians where we are trying to understand what it means to be the church in our space and time. I long to learn about the Bible alongside others. I want to work with Mike to involve people in ministry and help them do more than they ever thought possible. I want to see God transform and heal broken lives.
Julie Burstein's words struck me. I lived in the space between what I saw and what I hoped for when I was in love with Mike, and it was heartbreaking. She classifies that space as "loss." That's what I felt then and it is what I am feeling now. Then it was the loss of love; now it is the loss of my dreams for my post-graduation life. However, she also identifies loss as a necessary component of creativity. Out of the struggle to see both what is and what could be comes art. Not just the art we see in museums, but the art of creating anything new and original.
My blog may reflect some angst, but I have hope that the angst I feel now will result in a work of art in the years to come as I find creative and original ways to engage in ministry. One of the benefits of getting older is being able to look back on a variety of circumstances in which God has worked creatively and miraculously in my life when all I felt was loss. This may be another season of loss, hope, and art.
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| I can't put this little guy in daycare! |
3 comments:
ha ha ha I loved all of this! and the picture!
I am definitely in a place of loss, hope, and art. Writing is probably the main thing that gets me through this "pursuit of acting," where I'm mostly just waiting all the time. But also with each new idea I get for how to pursue it, I am also creating in that way, and it is cool to look back at the ways God has helped me in this, hence the book that I just wrote that I am one day going to edit. Hopefully soon! :D
Oh, and I can't wait to see how your "holy frustration" (term I picked up from a church once), leads to a creative way to do ministry and baby raising. Because when I have a baby (if, I guess), I still want to write and do my creative passions and raise a baby at the same time, but I don't know how that's possible either, so it'll be cool to see how you figure it out.
Thanks, Tracy! I'm glad you identify with "the space between." I like your phrase, "holy frustration." I've been thinking about that a lot over the long weekend. I also hope it leads to some good places in ministry!
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