Naptime Thinking

I only watch Jake three more times after today - it's hard to believe. The summer is flying by and life right along with it. A month from Sunday I'll be back at work - Vanderbilt work. (That's even harder to believe).

We went for a walk, today, and ended up at Dragon Park. I could have stayed there all day, probably, were it not for the squelching heat of noon in June (haha, that rhymed). I think a lot, whenever we end up at the park. I think a lot in general, but put me with a kid who isn't talking yet, surround me with other similiarly aged women with children, and get me outside and my mind's all over the place. Well, that's not true. Mostly it's stuck in "what am I doing with my life?" land.

I can say for sure, today, I'm nannying and getting ready for a wedding in (freakout) twenty-four days. Then I'll have a new permanent job: wifedom. To coincide with that, in a little over a month, I'll be back in an office at Vanderbilt, gearing up for the arrival of 1500 new students ready for the bigtime. Soon after, I'll begin occupying another office for the later part of the day back at my alma mater working with SIFE. And then, classes start. And then, hopefully, I'll look back on these days at Dragon Park where I question my existence and my contribution to the world (as I watch some of the world's most patient and courageous people care for the special needs children at the school just next door) as simple reality checks and not the defeating glimpses they sometimes feel like.

Two things have recently hit me, that were there all along (it's like knowing someone your whole life and not realizing they were left-handed... yeah). I'm going to get married and I'm going to get a job (at least I have close to a year to do that). Terrifying, right? Right. Want to know why? Because I've never really done either, and in today's society, both are set up to be wrought with failure and disappointment (more so, I think, than many things in life). I don't want a half-assed marriage or career. I want something unique, something built from the ground up, and something that fits while taking plenty of work and passion.

When I left Dragon Park, today, I laughed at how silly it was to cry myself to sleep last night with the fear of letting someone in as close as Cliff will be as my husband - knowing he'll have more ability than anyone in the world to hurt me. And we're all going to hurt each other. And I'm not always going to be my best. But it's silly to fear that in love or in life, when the evidence has been all along that God is so near, always has been - and He has made me a strong person who has learned a lot of lessons in the last twenty-three years. I have learned enough to avoid some mistakes and to accept that there will always be somethings in life that hurt or disappoint me but that's no reason to keep from loving and living.

Instead, it should compel me to do both even more. So I'll take a stab at it and maybe start spending time at Dragon Park more intentionally these next couple of weeks. And when I find myself thinking, I hope it's mostly about how grateful I am for a gracious God who fits together our lives, sometimes, in ways that make no sense or seem pointless and, in the end, were the truest and most purposeful ways to tie them all together.