Last time, we talked about offering to God those hints of angst that have no words.
For example, while floating in the hot springs pool and minding my own business, I randomly asked God the meaning of life.
“What did it all mean, God?” I found my soul exclaiming, revealing the angst within, if only to my thoughts and to God.
I got no answer.
So, I kept floating and enjoying my life and my family. I forgot I had even asked the question. But I received my answer later that night.
That night, when it was dark, I found myself floating on my back outside in that lonely hot springs pool. As I floated, my eyes gazed heavenward at the wondrous starry display above me. It was calm and quiet, and I was floating – Who knows where?
I found I was wondering if this floating feeling:
- this slightly disembodied feeling of resting on the water,
- this wandering feeling of the wind moving me somewhere (Where?),
- this wondrous, expansive feeling of the starry night just above me . . .
. . . if this was – perhaps?- what it would feel like to be close to death, to be in that “not-quite-here” but “not-quite-there-yet” expanse?
I remembered feeling something like this once before when I had nearly finished my degree.
I had to decide WHERE to move to next, to begin my job. I felt like a fish in a directionless fishbowl. Where WOULD I go? And did it matter? Indeed, I could move to the same hometown I grew up in, to my parents, but that wasn’t a given, necessarily, nor even a necessary possibility given employment prospects.
I had no roots to tie me or to pull me.
“Which way do fish in fishbowls travel?” my heart frequently wondered in that season.
Luckily, I married and gravitated to his world, so I didn’t have to think too long of this angst, but that . . . unattached . . . feeling surfaced now and then.
Like all of us, I had been a fish in a fishbowl that generally gravitated toward people I loved. In this way, I was like a small magnet in a fishbowl that would gravitate to a magnet on the side of the bowl. But what if these people are torn from me, like a kid moving out or on, or another relative or friend suddenly moving on or passing on?
Then what?
And that’s when I realized that there is one who is holding me even now, helping me float on my back like my dad did when I was a child. He has always been holding me. Even in the waters of the womb, He held me.
. . you formed me in my mother’s womb . . . Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
And I suddenly understood what it means to be grounded, to have a foundation.
And the people we gravitate towards?
We are attracted to those we love and those who love us – that’s all.
We receive and give love where we can because we are held in the arms of love.
Love for and from others are magnets that we drift towards.
Your love, God, is the trunk that grounds us.
. . the younger son . . . undisciplined and dissipated . . . had gone through all his money . . . He said, ‘All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I’m going back to my father. . .”
When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. [His father’s] heart pounding, [his father] ran out, embraced him, and kissed him.
And your love, pursuing us, holding us as we float through life, is what grounds us like the roots of a great tree.
And so, I felt a little less lost as I dried off and exited the swimming pool that night.
Try it, friend!
I hope you feel lost sometimes, too.
You’re welcome!
Good luck!
“How can we remember our ignorance, which our growth requires, when we are using our knowledge all the time?”
Henry David Thoreau
When the lyrics of this song whisper, “You’re the strength to carry on,” how do you feel? Can you express your thoughts to God? (He’s listening.)
Photo credit: Person lost by Andrew Neel on Unsplash
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