Since passing through the valley of grief, my spiritual path has quieted.... The true challenge now is finding God in everyday tasks. The house cleaning, cooking, day-job and relationships. Without a great trial at hand, it is easy to lose track of God--easy to stray from one's purpose. (But the sense of God's purpose always remains. I feel like I am digging for the path. Perhaps procrastinating--a strange guilt of putting something off--and yet I know I am not ready to tackle anything greater than what I am already doing. My sense of direction remains.)
I am in a place now that is whole. I don't know how else to describe it. I am so much older now--though perhaps only a year has passed, here I am, a new person, navigating this strange new life. There is a sense of duality, as though this path is still a dream, a shock to my body. There is another reality out there somewhere, where my old self lives as though my parents never died, making the same ridiculous choices that spoiled youth make. That parallel road lives inside of me, even if it cannot come to pass; it is a phantom of the mind.
Who am I, now? Who is this person who waits, who contemplates, who decides? Who works responsibly? Who is able to see what others are doing and intending? I can read people so much more easily than I used to. I know God so much better than I used to. And God's ways have become like a deep pool within myself, a natural wellspring of thought, without so much doctrine and studying and reading. What truths I have learned, have become me. There is no need to profess anymore. My person speaks of where I've been, who I was and what I've become.
I am reminded of this short post from Monday, July 4th, 2011.
And I must say now, that what was hard then is now easy.
What was unnatural then has become my nature.
What was impermanent has changed, and has left me a new person.
And this new part of myself... this strength, this kinship with God, this wisdom of the world and innate knowledge of truth--it has become the very root of myself. What God plucked from the earth, he has replanted and pruned. It is now time to continue growing--and perhaps, to bear fruit.
Then David said to Solomon his son, “Be strong and courageous and do it. Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed, for the Lord God, even my God, is with you. He will not leave you or forsake you, until all the work for the service of the house of the Lord is finished. ~1 Chronicles 28:20 ESV
