For my graduation last May, one of my best friends from my senior year bought me a journal with questions to inspire writing every day. Writing every day was one of my goals
last year, so the journal
is now a part of my daily routine.
The question for a few
days ago asked; are you searching for security, or are you up for adventure?
I had to pause and
think about that question (which is always a good thing to do before writing
anything) because I’m huge on security, planning, routine, and safety. The
structure and rules were things that I appreciated about college life; I
attended a Christian college with more rules and regulations than most
universities.
I met God at college, and He took over my life, which
was an experience similar to a cross between being abducted by aliens and
finding out I was a princess unawares. The people I encountered at college fell
into one of the two camps: those who were at various growth stages within their
royal roles while seeking to expand their knowledge of our King, and those who
desperately whispered escape plans from our alien abductors while refreshing
their knowledge of what the “normal” world was like. I could relate to both
groups. Some experiences and information were completely alien to me, grating
against everything I’d ever known. Some experiences and information made me
feel so special and so blessed royal. However, I didn't completely identify
with either group. I came to the warped conclusions that it was because I was
such a late addition to the “society”.
I liked the clear-cut, black-and-white, no-way-out
format of the college because I didn't have the anxiety of wondering what I
should do, what I should wear, and how I should respond to things. I always
felt very safe. All I really had to worry about was schoolwork and running.
Before college, I
lived in an environment with fewer rules and regulations, more freedom, more
responsibility, more decisions, and a hectic work and school schedule which I
had to make myself. In college, a lot of the decisions were already made for me
– what I could wear, where I could go at what time, which classes I needed to
take in order to graduate, which hours I could work on campus, even what I
could eat based on what was in the cafeteria that day – and I appreciated the
new-found safety which I enjoyed as one piece of a 50+ year old, well-oiled system. I loved the singular focus of homework and cross country. College
snatched quite a bit of the burden of the rest of the responsibilities off my
shoulders.
Then, I graduated
early, wishing that I could spend another year in college, and yet thrilled
to be done.
Life became instant confusion. Maybe it sounds stupid,
but I wrestled with issues as little as whether or not I should go back to
wearing blue jeans (because we weren't allowed to wear blue jeans at college)
and whether or not it was okay to miss a Sunday service because of work (this
was highly discouraged at college). Also, I struggled with bigger issues, such
as whether or not I should be okay with a stranger spending the night on my
couch (not even a feasible situation in a women’s Christian college dorm), what
church I should even attend (there had been a list of approved churches at
college), if I should still love gory action movies, and how I should respond when there didn't seem to be a correct
answer to a question.
My job posed even more ethically complicated situations, which I had before faced and accepted as a non-Christian in the job world. Now I
struggled because I had a new conscious and the Holy Spirit, both of which I
often didn't know how to handle. What were the college rules that I was
unconsciously connecting to my relationship with God, and what was the Holy
Spirit, and what was the old me?
Christians seem to somehow think that meeting God
makes things less complicated. On a big picture level, I found that truth to be
beautiful; nothing in the world makes any sense without God. On a day-to-day
basis, I found that thought to be a horrible lie.
Imagine having a unexpected collision, landing in the
hospital with all these problems caused by the collision, being told that you
actually have a bunch of other problems revealed by X-rays and tests, finding
out you aren't who you thought who you were, nothing in life means what you
thought it did, your purpose is completely different than what you thought it
was, you need a heart transplant and a brain transplant (if that’s even
possible) and a blood infusion, and the person who is going to do those
procedures and give you those things is now hugging you and shaking your hand,
and he’s a stranger to you, even though he’s known you for forever. You’re
meeting him for the first time, freaking out because he'll now be part of your life forever. Regular surgeries will be
required throughout your entire life, some more painful and hard than others, and
your life will never go back to “normal” (whatever normal was in the first
place).
That’s what meeting God did to me.
The rest of last year, I felt dangerously insecure. I
felt like I was either being reckless or being a kill-joy. I felt like I was
being labeled simultaneously as a conservative Pharisee or an irresponsible
liberal by different people. I tried to make my own list of morals and answers
to my FAQs. The organization didn't help; no matter what situation appeared, I
always lost. Without fail, I lost. Sometimes the decisions I made seemed okay,
then crumbled. Sometimes someone told me a decision I felt was wrong was actually
right, or a decision that I thought was right was actually wrong. I thought I’d
been welcomed into a society of doppelgangers, and I was in grave danger of
becoming one as well.
The security or adventure question was another one of
those questions that I would lose, no matter what I answered.
Spontaneity is nice to a degree, but I prefer
security, always knowing what is coming next, having clear boundaries, correct
answers.
Complaining to God, I cried;
“I don’t feel secure.”
What don’t you
feel secure in?
“Everything.”
How much do you
need to know to be secure?
I blanched, realizing my problem. “Everything.”
My prerequisite for security was omniscience. My
definition of security was never feeling uncertain in anything, not even in
what time I got up in the morning, and especially not in when I would have the
money to pay my bills or if I would be hurt by a certain person.
I wanted God to be like college: a list of then/if
equations, fail-proofs to various scenarios, something like a step-by-step to
life, or a Life for Dummies book, and He just … wasn't. I wanted Him to be simple to understand, when He is a complex, round character (to put it in author's terms).
The answer to the security or adventure question has
to be both options, I ended up recognizing eventually. Life with God is going
to be a default adventure because I will never know everything, but I can be
secure in the fact that He will always be in control of the adventure and
always right by my side in the middle of it.
I’m just never content to have it be that way.