Discontent and Transformation.

I’ve been stupid busy lately. Some of it is valid and some of it isn’t. I’ve been slammed with changes at work, changes that affect my everyday routine. My habits. So, the changes haven’t exactly been met with open arms yet. But my invalid busyness is due to my increased procrastination in conjunction with my increased responsibilities. In sum, the more work Nina gets, the less Nina does. I know, Nina makes no sense.

I have been encouraged by a strange source: the blogging community. There are a handful of blogs I suscribe to and I read my feeds during my downtime at work. And I noticed a trend among all my fellow bloggers - that we all have dreams, goals to achieve but that there is conflict to overcome. Okay, okay, so that is a trend with every human being, but it has been encouraging to read these thoughts and know that I’m not alone in my discontentment.

My discontentment has been at an all-time high (or close), mainly because I feel like I am on the verge of something great, but I’m holding back. It’s like life is on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t quite get there. So to resolve this friction, I’ve given myself more distractions, unnecessary distractions. And yes, nothing has been resolved. There is definitely a monkey on my back.

But I read this on Dan Kimball’s blog as he speaks about his church’s mission statement:

We start it with “asking God to transform us” as it needs to be God not human effort when we are serving on the mission and our sinful nature would likely make us more self-centered than others-centered - so it must be the Spirit of God changing us as we serve Him.

And I haven’t been able to forget it. Combined with guest speaker Eric Mason’s message a few weeks back on BROKENNESS and you’ve got me not only thinking about where God wants to take me, but also what God is trying to teach me RIGHT NOW.

Where am I right now? Discontent, procrastinating, self-loathing, stressed, insecure, hopeful, dreaming.

What does God want me to learn right now? I thought maybe He’d want to increase my patience, but in all my stale waiting, I think He is also reminding me that I need to at least get off my keyster. But maybe, just maybe, He doesn’t want me to get up to do, do, do. Maybe, just maybe, He’s reminding me that before I do, I should pray. And not just pray my usual prayer that He’ll give me strength for whatever I do, but to actually pray that He guides what I do. Pray for transformation. Because I can’t change the world and I can’t change myself.

My day off.

This morning I woke up feeling very unsure. I wasn’t so sure as to what I was unsure of, but either way, there was a bit of discontent stirred up within me. It’s my two day off stretch and I needed to find things to do, to occupy my mind, but not so much that it caused the slightest bit of stress.

I went to the bookstore. Everytime I go, I vow to return more frequently. I’m a sucker for the smell of books plus the smell of overpriced coffee. There was a time where I’d read books often. During class, waiting for dinner, before bed, and in the middle of the night… Now I just read books to try and grasp a better understanding of my life which is seemingly flying by. Yes, I’ve got my Bible, but my being wants to hear another soul searching like I am, one who is a step ahead of their search. It’s a bit weird to admit, but within a few months, I’ve grown to trust Don Miller. I think it has a lot to do with his rambling style and how I can relate it to my rambling mouth. Every now and again, I’d like to think I say something worth saying like Miller does in his stories.

“Relationships aren’t the best thing, if you ask me. People can be quite untrustworthy, and the more you get to know them — by that I mean the more you let somebody know who you really are — the more it feels as though something is at stake. And that makes me nervous. It takes me a million years to get to know anybody pretty well, and even then the slightest thing will set me off. I feel it in my chest, this desire to dissociate.”

I have a temporary roommate for a few weeks. I also refer to this temporary roommate as my best friend. With all best friends come stories of trials but with those trials, a strengthening in relationship. We’ve gotten to know each other extremely well, but there are still things I probably wouldn’t tell her and even worse, vice versa. Is this an issue of trust? The fact that if we tell the truth to each other, something disastrous would occur, shattering the fragileness of the friendship? What is it that we’re afraid of? What is if that I’m afraid of? Why is it that a person longs to have relationships with others but at the same time scared to death that the relationship would go forward?

And it’s times like these that I see the parallel of me needing a relationship on earth as needing a relationship with my Heavenly Father. That’s a no-brainer, I guess. The hard part is putting that into action.

Anyway, that’s what happens when I get a day off. Time to think.