My Cocoon

"...I broke the twig from the limb and carried the cocoon home. For this was my cocoon. My darkness. My soul incubating within.
   Back home I carefully taped the twig with the cocoon to a branch of a crab tree in my backyard. [Later,] I stood at the window watching the cocoon, which hung in the winter air like an upside-sown question mark. Live the question, God whispered.
   Knowledge descended into my heart and I understood. Crisis, change, the myriad upheavals that blister the spirit and leave us groping- they aren't voices simply of pain but also of creativity. And if we would only listen, we might hear such times beckoning us to a season of waiting, to the place of fertile emptiness."
   - Sue Monk Kidd

I am a torn and selfish human being. Not that I am unique in this description. In fact, it's a big part of what causes me to blend in despite my individual characteristics. But it disturbs me no less. As I lay awake last night yet again and tried not to think, I thought a lot about a lot of things. Mostly me. God. My family. The future. The world as we know it. The world to come. The more I thought, the more I wondered what I was supposed to think. As I read through the book of John the answers I found brought up more questions, more confusion, more of a desire to know. Then I realized, I was sick of thinking and I was sick of asking. I just wanted to know. I get discouraged when I don't know, I feel as though I am doing something wrong, or not doing something right enough. I'm tired of the internal struggle, I want to hitch a ride on the escalator to the next life and bypass the hassle of the journey.  I'm an American damnit, I have my rights to the easy way! And this is where I had a little heart to heart with God. Why do I have to keep waking at 3:00 a.m for hours on end? Really, if you would let me sleep I could get up earlier and read the word then. Am I even getting anywhere with these hours of tired half-awareness? As I tried to convince God that the lack of sleep is really not doing anyone any good, I finally came to the conclusion that sleep was not going to come at all. Ever. Again. It was a useless fight, my choices were to sit there in misery, not accomplishing anything, or comply. Except I wasn't sure what it even meant to comply. I'm still not really. I have this vague sense like God is calling me. I keep trying to say, Speak Lord, for your servant is listening. But I can't tell if I am really saying it. Does that make sense?

I have been rather hypocritical. I speak of life and its hills and waves and how it's a journey, that some big climax and fairy tale endings are not to be expected. I say that, but then I find myself sitting around anxiously waiting for the climax in my life. I endlessly pine after the fairytale ending I secretly long for. The fact that I am not satisfied constantly haunts me. I try to forge feelings of deep spirituality and soul-quenching emotion, but the honest truth is.... funny how I thought I might be able to finish that sentence once I started it. The honest truth is, I'm still trying to figure out what the honest truth is. I used to rededicate my life to God every few months, thinking, or at least hoping, that with each dedication it would be a little more real or long-lasting. I kept waiting for the time when I would finally reach some epiphany that would drastically change my life forever, allowing me to never need another re-dedication because I had some how "made it" to the plateau of my Christian walk with God. I have long since given up this theory. Or so I thought. Sometimes it creeps back into my confused subconscious.

I keep waiting for some big, new, ground-breaking truth that forces me to change completely, and hopefully all at once. Instead I feel the painful agony of lies being revealed and then slowly chipped away from my innermost being. Lies I didn't even realize I still- or ever- believed. And so I find myself relating to words and passages that hint at questions my mouth doesn't know how to express. I can taste it there at the tip of my tongue, all that I long for but can not yet attain. And then it hits me for a split second or two. This is all part of the inescapable journey. Not signs that I am failing, but that God is answering my heart's call to be changed.