Lately, it feels like my life is in a holding pattern. There’s that sinking feeling when the pilot announces you are going to have to make another circle around the airport. You’re tired and you just want to go home. You can see the runaway down below. People are groaning. Children start to cry. All you can do is just sit there in your chair and play with your used napkin and an empty cup. That’s where I’m at right now. A year ago, I wrote about some of my frustration that the future has seemingly been an unknown and that I really don’t know where it’s going. Well, here we are a year later and I’m no closer to having any answers. I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished very much in this past year. I got in better shape and ran in a 10K race and lost some weight. That was a good thing. Other than that, I don’t know what else I have to show. There’s a voice that whispers in my ear that I should be farther along at this age but I’m pretty sure he’s a liar.
I took my thirty-first birthday a little better than my thirtieth. Maybe it’s because you can only hear so many times that you’re old and no longer cool so many times before it loses its shock. I can definitely tell that I am no longer the demographic that TV and radio advertises to anymore (not that I ever bought the stuff that they advertised anyway.) Aging is such a gradual and subtle thing. I still work with college kids on a semi-regular basis with my fraternity and I can feel the divide widen each year. Each year, the freshmen are the same age, but I am a year older. I’d like to think they keep me young, but they are also a reminder that those days are long over.
I don’t know. I’ve written countless times about how hard it is to not look on the past with regret or longing and not waste away the present by longing for what’s coming in the future. It sure is harder than it sounds. But I must. Living anywhere other than now gets nothing accomplished. If it kills me, I’m going to love where I’m at right now and what the Lord has given me right now and deal with tommorrow when it rises.
I can totally relate, Jeff. Really. It’s encouraging to know I’m not alone, and it’s also a good reminder to hear that I can’t sit in my little corner and whine and cry about it.
Thanks.
I hear ya about the ‘circling the airport’. The one saving grace for this is the ministry I’m involved with. We keep being forced to look inward, and forcing a ‘death’ to ourselves. When we step back and look at it, there’s been some progress. There’s also some really interesting opportunities coming down that road.
But the big kicker is this ‘leaving my job’ thing. Walking out without a net forces any christian to consider God. I know LOTS of people in our demographic, or slightly younger who’ve done that, and are at some serious skids in their career, but they feel like that’s where God called them (with one VERY notable exception… he fell away from the faith all together… 🙁 )
–Jason