Secondly, I'm living in the Inbetween time and have been for many many months now and I'm over it. Over the past year a lot has happened. I found out that I was pregnant and we joyfully (well most ofthe time, pregnancy is hard!) awaited the birth of our beautiful little girl Natalie who was born on March 2, 2014. I finished up internship which I was done with exactly one week prior to Natalie's birth. I have been the "interim secretary", a title I gave myself, for Frank's church. I have been a stay at home mom who has struggled with all that that entails mentally, physically, emotionally. I graduated seminary. And I am awaiting first call. Can we just stop and marvel for a moment at all these iLife events that have taken place?
Ok, marveling time is over. The fact of the matter is that along with all these life events comes a geat deal of the unknown and the Inbetween. And with all this unknown and Inbetween times have come a lot of anxiety, anger and resentment which I tend to be really good at hiding behind a mask of excitement and easy-going-ness but I'm so exhausted that I'm starting to crack. I have resentment toward my classmates who have a call already. I have anger at my husband who never seems to "see" the things that need to be done around the house (this is by way no reflection on him at all! He washed the diapers, unloaded, reloaded and started the dishes without being asked today. It is simply that my eyes are clouded by the fact that it took me 5 days to wash, dry and fold 6 loads of laundry and 2loads of diapers this week). I feel annoyed that I have spent so much time and energy cultivating my gifts for ministry and am so ready to use them and have had exactly 0 interviews. And along with that I am frustrated that we have found ourselves in uncut a loving and wonderful community and had we not found ourselves here I would probably have a call by now. And probably most importantly I feel angry with myself for feeling all these things.
So as I sat in the bath tub tonight drinking a glass of wine, trying to stuff all these feelings back down into the depths of my being and reading "Pastrix" I realized that I'm not alone in feeling this way. We all have Inbetween times which weigh us down and cause us to overthink and over-internalize. So tonight I let myself feel my feeling. I let them bubble up and step out into the daylight without trying to stuff them back down into their depths. And I relized something about myself. All this anxiety, frustration and anger all comes from simultaneously looking back at how hard I worked to finish school, set up my house, have a baby and so on as well as looking forward to all that lies ahead of me, being a mother, starting not only my first call but an entirely new career which I'm not to entirely convinced I was prepared for and all that remains to be unseen. I relized that in the midst of this anxiety and frustration producing looking back and forward there was no space to simply be present in the moment which leaves no space to hear people's stories, no space to be open to the spirit to to the ministry that God is calling me (I guess I don't need to wait for a call to be involved with God's ministry), no space to enjoy spending time with my beautiful little Natalie and so on. I don't know if realizing this is the hard part or the easy part but I do know that from here on out when I get bogged down by these frustrations, anger and resentments that I need to try hard to take a step back and see what is infront of sme rather than what once was and what may be.
Living in the Inbetween time can really suck sometimes but it can also be a great excuse to live in the moment and there's a funny kind of freedoms about that.
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