uncomfortable seasons

a quiet morning in Mum's kitchen // 35 mm film

Before I experienced this transition, I romanticized it. I moved back to Virginia after spending three months in New Zealand last fall, and I jubilantly announced, "I'm ready to embrace all! The joys and the pains!!" Yeah, right. It's more like daily trying to ward off discouragement as I continually must re-adjust my expectations.

Here's the situation: I knew it would be a challenge living with my mother and 14 yr old sis. Don't get me wrong, they are beautiful souls and I love them and I missed them terribly when I lived 1,000 miles away from them. But I was on my own for 5 years, and it's quite different coming back as an adult child.

When I was in NZ, I looked forward to the new season ahead. I expected to get plenty of piano students and other part-time work almost instantly, save up the moolah, and then move out from my mom's place in a matter of a few months. Yet things hardly ever go as we imagine them to, right? Instead, this uncomfortable, longer-than-expected transition period is stripping me of a false sense of any semblance of control I tried to maintain by planning, planning, planning. Those plans have failed. And I am receiving fresh reminders of my frailty, my minute-by-minute need for God.

These days, I am not as quick to celebrate the embrace of all. Embracing the pain is not comfortable. But these days are more about my heart's awareness to the beauty in everything than about being comfortable. Ewww, I hate that word. Because I want growth, and often that means mess.

But in the arms of a loving God who brings comfort to my soul, I can embrace that mess.