If someone told me, "I can explain everything," I would laugh in their face and walk away. If they tried to start explaining it all to me anyway, I'd loudly recite Jabberwocky, put my hands over my ears, and generally act loony until they gave up.
You see, I don't want to understand everything.
I was thinking about this as I brushed my teeth this morning. Too often, I get frustrated by how little I seem to know, by how dimly I see, and by how uncertain everything is. I get annoyed by my lack of foresight and control. Not that I want to control your life; I want to control my life at least a little better. And so, in that moment, I throw up my hands and blurt out, "I just want someone to explain this all to me!"
I just want to understand, because if I understand, I'll know how to act, react, respond. If I understand, it'll all be better, right? My life will improve, my relationships will improve; in general, everything will get better if I can wrap my mind completely around it all.
But all this just isn't true. Nor is it what I truly want.
When I step out of that moment of frustration, when I've had a decent night's sleep, when I'm honest with myself, I recognize that there are other things I want more than an explanation.
I want a life of surprises. I wait for new things, and watch for new joys, every day. I long for adventure, for discovery, for growth. Joy comes not in the known, humdrum, expected things, but in the unexpected, the bright brilliant bursts of light, the inexplicable wonders. And I want that joy. Next week's plans won't go how I imagine. Even this week's plans are threaded with unknowns, and I relish that. I enjoy having only a framework - tentative, incomplete - on which to hang the daily joys as they come.
What would living be if I knew it all already? Where would the fun be? Where the adventure?
I'm glad I don't know. I'm glad that I don't know where I'll be or what I'll be doing in 2 years. With my track record, it's quite a toss-up. So I fling the coin into the air, and keep going. I don't need to wait for it to land (and if it doesn't land, because a bird gulped it down, where would I be? stuck there, not moving, waiting...). Even though sometimes I wish the puzzle were just a wee bit more done, that's ok. It's a puzzle of a life - it'd be a bummer for it to be all done so early. What would I do with the rest of my life if there were nothing left to find? So with all these questions, big and small, that plague me, that pressure me into demanding answers which I have no right or reason to demand, I will set them aside.
I do not need to know what my "career" will be. I do not need to know when or where I will go back to school. I do not need to know how many children (if any) I will have, nor who I will marry nor when. I do not need to know if a book of my poetry or essays will ever be published. I do not need to know how many pull-ups I will eventually be able to do. I do not need to know when I will return to Rome. I do not need to know if I will ever record as part of a symphonic rock band. I do not need to know so many things. I do not need to know, because there is one thing I do know, and that is sufficient.
The one thing I know is: God is for me.
This is one thing that I know, even though I do not understand. My mind cannot wrap fully around the mystery of God, and even though logic trips over this, yet I know. Or at least, I know enough. And I choose to live based on that partial knowing. I choose to believe that God gives good and perfect gifts. I choose to walk with a profound certainty that He is and will be doing wonderful things for and in me.
I don't know what will happen tomorrow, but this I do know: when I wake up, make breakfast, brush my teeth, I will rejoice. I will give thanks for the lively potential in every moment; I will praise my God that He works in all things; I will choose to be thankful that I am alive, that I am increasing in health, that I know such wonderful people, that I have food to eat, and work to do. I will rejoice always, because "I know whom I have believed," and I am "confident of this, that he who began a good work in us will carry it on to completion."
So, in the words of those greatest of comic philosophers, I say, "It's a wonderful world, Hobbes, ol' buddy. Let's go exploring."
My God and I, we're going to have a grand adventure!
2 comments:
I love your line "the lively potential in every moment."
Not only does it sum up your theme of the beauty in not knowing, but it also reminds me of my responsibility to make the best of each moment.
It reminds me that each moment has the potential to be joyous.
funny how God's been leading so many of His own through just this same sort of realization... "uncertain of the next step, but certain of GOD" as Oswald Chambers so wonderfully put it. I suppose it makes sense - in a season of shift, we need to have let go of our plans enough to be able to respond - if He asks it of us - when the time is right and He opens a new door in front of our faces.
odd to me, though, that you find so much joy in the unexpected... I'm so bad at noticing completely unexpected things (unless God gives me a "heads up" which He thankfully often does! but then it's not completely unexpected anymore...) that there is little to no enjoyment, only varying degrees of confusion, oblivion, and sometimes shock! maybe a better way of saying it for some of us is that joy in life comes unexpectedly in living through the expected, or partially foreseen things. or things that were not foreseen, yet flow evenly forward in the realm of related possibility. hmmm...
~D.
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