Now What?

After waiting for a while the farm got back to me and wanted me to come for a visit. I leapt at the opportunity and my hopes soared high as I though, “This could be it!” I quickly made arrangements to spend a day and a night with them and then off I went in Jose towards the mountains east of San Diego, my heart all a flutter with excitement and hope and amazement at the adventure I am on.

When I got there it was beautiful; a secluded little town in the cracks of huge hills, the air smelling crisp and clean and fresh. The farm was small, the people welcoming and easy to talk with. It really felt perfect, until it didn’t. While it was perfect it was also not a place I could see myself living. The farm would be great; the people would be not so great. They are nice and kind, but they are who I would be with all the time, working and living and sleeping in all the same places. I sort of wish I could be ok with it, but I can’t. They aren’t people I would want to be my whole community. My friend Deanna helped me see that I need to be able to tell people my heart and talk about what God is doing in me all the time, and I don’t think I could with these people.

Crash. Explosion. Smoke and flames and ruins all around me. That’s what my heart felt as I realized I couldn’t do it. So much hope and excitement very suddenly smashed. I feel stupid you guys. I feel like I should be more flexible, or I should be able to make it work, or I should never have hoped so much in something that wasn’t guaranteed. Yesterday I got so made at God that I said the F-word to him. What the Hell is he doing with me anyways? How much more does he expect from me? Have I not already given Him all I have and more?

I so wanted to live away in the mountains and dig in the dirt and watch food grow out of the ground from a seed I stuck in there with my thumb. I wanted to never have to worry about what time it was or if I was being successful. I wanted the dreams I had as a girl to come true. The dreams of farming and loving people and working hard and being at peace with that… I wanted so badly to see them come to pass now, while I am so young, before I get stuck in a 9-5 job I don’t care about.

I know I said so many months ago that this journey would not be easy. Could it be my heart missed that memo? I want it to be easy. I wanted to arrive in San Diego and find a great job and place to live right away. I wanted to skip all this worry and stress and frantic job-hunting. I thought God would have it figured out for me. Now I feel stupid for having thought that.

I feel stupid and I feel foolish. Even in this period of waiting I applied to so many jobs and did my best to listen for the voice of God, but either I am deaf or He is silent. I keep thinking there is just one move I have to make, like in chess or any other strategy game, and if I make that move just right at just the right time I will magically win the game and own the whole board! I guess life isn’t a game, well, it sort of is, but I am not playing life, I am living it and it is hard. Why should I have expected anything different? It has never been easy, only different forms of hard. I just wish I could yell, “Uncle!” and God would run to my rescue and show me the right moves to make. Or even just tell me what I am doing is all I need to do. Today I feel like I should be doing a hundred other things in order to make this work, yet I have no idea what those hundred things would be.

This is my heart today, friends: messy, angry, fearful, sad, lost and very confused.