There was no other choice for me…leaving the familiar was like God pushing me out of the nest. He was asking me to rise up and fly. New turf is rewarding and exhilarating – but also a lot like a junkie with intense withdrawals. There are days I am screaming on the inside… demanding some form of definition as to who I am and what I’m supposed to be DOING in life. “Doing” is like a drug that masks the pain of waking up to being myself. The skin crawls and the flesh cries out like the drug addict who would sell their very soul for another fix. I know…I’m melodramatic, but it’s a fairly accurate description for the process.
In moments of weakness I want to return to the familiar by looking for a new role to play, duty to perform, or job to fill. I am inwardly urged to resist the temptation. It’s not that I will never “do” anything again…I will. What I do will strengthen what this season of “non-doing” is all about – allowing myself to be who I was created to be with no apology, false humility, fear, or reservation.
I was wrestled from the nest to find my voice, rhythm, style, and expression…then, to live it by serving others from my true being. I will do much, but what I do will reflect who I am at the core. My service will flow from the revelation of who I know myself to be.
Of course there’s a paradox! Although I spent years doing things that didn’t satisfy they weren’t the “wrong” things. They were the “right” things for showing me who I wasn’t (I have to see who I’m not in order to see who I am). Doing refines being and being refines doing. So I “do” for as long as it takes for me to realize that this is NOT who I am. I may even “keep doing” long after I know that what I’m doing is no longer a fit but eventually I will break under the pressure of trying to do that which does not nourish the call of my being. It is THEN that I will enter a place like the one I’m in right now – a place where I am not allowed to do anything until I can recognize and call myself by the name that God has chosen for me…I am Susan, He calls me a writer…
Amen Susan! A big WOW again and again and again . . .
every time you write! Yes, indeed!
Certainly the toughest place I’ve ever been in my life, and perhaps yours too. Not seeing, not knowing, just being each day. We’ve come to depend so much on self-existence that this opposite seems “extreme”. But always…He is with us. 😉
It was good for me to re-read this post. If fits nicely with the one I posted today. And you’re right; this place is tough…and it feels extreme…but He is teaching us something new for a reason. I can hardly wait to see with new eyes!