a part-time poet
uncertanity, identity, transitions, transitions, transitions
I woke up this morning, rolled over, and filled my belly with envy. Scrolling on Instagram, I came across the page of a girl I know and turned green. Something is wrong when you envy someone else’s life that you don’t even want right now. She is a wife. New mother. Has different interests than I do. Yet, I couldn’t understand why seeing her page and life plagued me with jealousy. I texted cried my sister about my own life. I realized I wasn’t jealous of her life, but I envied her certainty. Granted, social media is comprised of short reels and pretty pictures and I have no clue how certain she is about her life and what season she is in— but it looks like it; it was enough to make me ill. It was not her life I wanted, but that I had a deep pit of a stomach aching for the certainty of her life. I wondered if she had a clue how certain her life looks. (a whole other rabbit hole) Yet, also how might my life look put together to someone else?
For the first time in my life, I do not have a full time job. I am currently in school full time. (a luxury that I do not take for granted.) Paralyzing me was some kind of hybrid identity crisis, fear of the future and sickness about the future. I don’t have a steady income and it makes me weary of what the future holds. I realized maybe I didn’t have as much faith as I thought I did, and I was leaning on money and accolades to dictate my future and not the heart of God.
It is not foreign for me to know this feeling. What if I hate my next season of life/career? What if my financial aid doesn’t come in for me to finish my education? What if I don’t get a job I love? What if I can’t finish my degree? I am praying to have a heart that aligns with God, but God knows it’s getting hard for me to pray with an open hand. Clutching my desires to much I don’t have a clue if its my will or His. I’m tired.
I started spiraling about identity. What if I’m not a writer? What if I stop? What if I don’t know who I am at all? I know I am the beloved of God, but a writer?? Were the last couple of years a farce? A part-time poet. I said this out loud and my girlfriends gave me hell. IT IS NOT PART-TIME. To be a poet or writer of any sort is to abandon the expectation to be perfect. I will always be a writer, prayerfully. I know God called me to be one before I even knew I was one. Yet even in that certainty other uncertainties revel itself.
I hate liminal spaces. I just want to know! I want to know if God will give me a job that satisfies. Work that feels meaningful. I want to know if I’m going to graduate. I want to know that my bills will be paid. I want to know that my daughter will get to go to her dream college. I want to know that everything works out. I am tired.
The nature of transitions. If we knew everything and how it would turn out, we wouldn’t need God. I don’t know. Honestly, I would still need Him. I’d just be a lot more prideful. The truth is if it doesn’t happen the way I set up in my head at least I have grieved all the validation it was. Yet, that still does not change the way God sees me, knows me. He is so certain of me and His plans for me. I am in a wide-open space. I tell my soul that God is kind here, too. He is eager for me just as I am eager to see what He will do. I must earnestly wait on Him.
I am writing you love letters from Hilo.
I pray you read this with hope and love. With joy and expectation— knowing Jesus loves you but more importantly He needs you to grow up— in your word reading, praying, believing, hoping, looking for His return.
All my love,
G.
