Is there ever an end to transition? I think I know the answer to that even as I ask. I used to think of growth as every north american seems to be taught: that growth is upward. But it is not, I say emphatically. I suppose if I am down as far as I can be then growth is upward. But that focus on upward mobility is for the corporations, the big money makers, the ones to whom image is oh-so-important. I hope I am no longer in that category. I want to grow in every direction, like an apple tree. It grows downward through the ground, upward to the sky, outward to other creation, and like all creation it changes in seasons.
I am so tired of people acting as if position creates authority, or spirituality, or knowledge. I have had positions in my life that I have been proud of, but I have to be careful to understand what that pride is from. There is nothing wrong with being proud of doing a good job, and pursuing passion and leading others along the way. But I don’t want to think that my pride is in some sort of title that I can pass around so that other leaders (even in the vineyard…yeah, that’s right) think I am somehow important.
Thank God that my husband loves me just for who I am, and for everything I am. He loves me when I am the most horrible person alive and at my ugliest most disgraceful self. And he loves me when I am fully using the gifts I’ve been given and pursuing passion and dream relentlessly. And he loves all the other moments in-between. If the title of “wife” was why he loved me we would be screwed.
I digress.
Transition is somehow caught up in some of these things. We are in this long moment where we have to ask God what He is asking of us next. We have been obedient to this point to what we heard Him speak, but now that time has ended. And I am anxious in some ways to move on, to leave what little position I have, and to get more real and more raw with the people around me that I love. For anyone who knows Adam and I, we are extremely raw and honest people. But no one can be that with everyone. And I have tried…and I am tired. Tired of leading a vast majority of people who don’t desire to be led. Or to lead themselves. And if God says “keep holding the line” I will and I will go down fighting. But if He is not asking for that fight then I don’t want to keep holding.
Just the simplicity of friends who love each other and pray together and worship together and listen and learn together..that is what I miss. That is what I crave. And so we may step back from what little safety we have and throw our passion into building that relationship in our marriage. Because to be honest, it is lacking in those areas. And to give ourselves to just a few, that we could truly pursue Christ and friendship in all it’s glory and it’s ugliness.
