Any minute now, my ship is coming in
I’ll keep checking the horizon
I’ll stand on the bow, feel the waves come crashing
Come crashing down down down, on me.
And you say, be still my love
Open up your heart
Let the light shine in.
But don’t you understand
I already have a plan
I’m waiting for my real life to begin.
-Colin Hay, lyrics to ‘Waiting for my Real Life to Begin’.
For most of my teenage and now adult years I’ve had a sense that I’m waiting around for my “real life to begin”. Real life starts once you - decide on a college, -decide on a major, -get a degree, - find a job, - find the right guy, etc etc. I’m starting to get the impression that this feeling that I’m waiting for, the feeling of ‘ah yes, this is what I’m supposed to be doing’ is not only elusive but impossible to attain.
A lot of changes have been made lately, all good ones…and all scary to me. It’s not surprising that these changes make me anxious but in order to explain my anxiety or unsettled feelings I’ve said to several people, “I’m just really in a transitional phase right now.”
Transitional phase. They’re words that let people know God’s working on my heart, my situation is changing and I’m slowly but surely getting adjusted to it. And the best part is that people understand it, perhaps because they too have experienced a “transition”. But I think I might be wrong to say that…and yet somehow I’m also so very right.
It’s wrong because transitional phase implies that I’ve left point A and will soon be arriving at point B. Except that in life there never is a point B. Situations, people, and places are always changing and trying to hold onto any of those is like desperately running towards a mirage, it’s just sand running through your tightly fisted fingers. Deciding on a college major doesn’t give you the “at last” feeling you’ve been looking for, or at least if it does that magical feeling only lasts a few weeks before it’s replaced with new worries and a new future to figure out. I’m now convinced that no earthbound decision that we make will lead to that wonderful point B where we are forever satisfied, assured, at peace or content.
So I’m wrong but also right, because this earth is not my final home and ultimately I will go up to that big “point B” in the sky where the concerns of the this earth fall away and there is no more tears, no more wondering if I should do this or that with my life. It is there that I will find the “ah yes, this is what I was made to do” feeling, and it will be eternally worshipping my Creator.
So my words are correct but my heart hadn’t quite caught up yet. It’s difficult to imagine a life of uncertainty, disappointed, a lifetime of never getting to hold on to the most precious people and things we love. But do I let that make me anxious and afraid, or do I look to my God, who’s promised to prepare a room for me in His house?
I’m reminded of the words to the song “Annabelle” by Gillian Welch:
‘We cannot have all things to please us, no matter how we try. Til’ we all go to Jesus, we can only wonder why.’
