mid-life crisis

A year ago I quit my job of five years as a high school English teacher in order to pursue something that I loved. The crazy part is that I had no idea what I loved. I just knew that teaching English was no longer something I felt passionate about. At the time my life was pretty crappy around the edges: Chaz and I were experiencing our first marriage strains and a chronic illness was keeping me from getting pregnant. I prayed for quite a long time about it, and in my heart I knew that moving on was exactly what God wanted me to do. It felt crazy, like jumping from a cliff with no parachute. I had no plans for a job and no true interests in a new career. I just knew I had to move. I remember being on my knees in my bathroom promising the Lord that I would trust him as I moved forward with no plans. Terror and peace fought for control daily. 

One year later I sit at my computer typing as my two-month-old daughter sleeps in her infant seat beside me. The hope of becoming a mother was always in the heart of those prayers a year ago, hoping that God was telling me to move because part of his plans for me included motherhood. I have exactly what I wanted. I look at my daughter and I feel an overwhelming sense of love, but the thing I thought I'd feel--completeness--isn't there. I know by now that the sense of always chasing something, always wanting more is part of our humanly "flesh" nature and that once we achieve that goal or get that thing we want we enjoy it for a time and then quickly move on to the next want. But right now the existentialism is overwhelming. The dreaded and overused "Who am I?" is pounding at my front door each time I open my eyes in the morning. Yes, I am a child of God. Yes, I am a new creation in Christ. 

But why in the world can't he just give me a straightforward job description?!

Nobody told me that this disconnection from self and God came along with becoming a parent. Or is it just me? I'd like to wallow in self-pity and dissolution and whine about my lack of motivation and ask God why he won't fix me. But I know that any passion that's worthwhile is the passion for Christ and his word and his work. You don't get to be existential when you know God's word. In his classic devotional My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers writes, "If we continually try to bring back those exceptional moments of inspiration, it is a sign that it is not God we want. We are becoming obsessed with the moments when God did come and speak with us, and we are insisting that He do it again. But what God wants us to do is to 'walk by faith'."

In all honesty, I didn't know the answer when I began writing this post. But God reminded me. Just like anything that's worthwhile--marriage, parenthood, a good book--lapses in excitement and questions of "Do I want to keep on?" come from time to time. I feel that it's also part of the Christian walk. With all the books and sermons on the topic of passion I assume it's a given. What it comes down to is always the same. Trust. On that bathroom floor a year ago, I told God I would trust him. I know I can trust him still--to spark passion for him again, to spark a passion for something in life with which he has gifted me. To exchange "Who am I?" for "I trust you."