I feel out of place.
A fish out of water, if you will. A bird who can't fly. A cat with a long tail in a room full of rocking chairs.
I am drinking chai tea. Eating an apple, listening to Jack Johnson. I just finished teaching at one job and it is almost time for me to leave for my next job. And I'm... fine.
I just feel odd. I'm not odd like the 'normal' odd. In fact, to look at me or even to talk to me I doubt many people would notice it but its inside. I'm almost arm-wrestling myself. I feel like Gandolph standing on the precipice saying, 'You shall not pass!' to a part of myself. The child part- the part that wants to be a child forever, reading all day, watching kid movies, flying on daydreams, that side screams at the bigger, scarier part of me - the part that wants to burst out of its safe cacoon, to fly away on real dreams, the powerful side that wants to accomplish big things and be more then me.
Who will win?
I'm guessing I could never really be satisfied with being stuck 'here' forever. But we shall see. Maybe I will become the 'one left behind'.
In Little Women, Beth is the character left behind. She says that she never wanted to be anything other then her family's Beth, who stays at home. But in the end she is the one going ahead... to death. "To die would be an awfully big adventure."
Yet there is so much to life! "To live would be an awfully big adventure." I'm torn between wanting to be like Peter Pan forever a kid surrounded by many adventures, but never able to move forward, never able to be more then exactly who he is at age twelve. Forever stuck on the outside looking in. Or should I be a lost boy willing to come into the family, willing to face change and to face life.
Sometimes I think this is what faces us when we choose Christ... or at least it was when I choose Christ. I had to choose between being satisfied with the life I knew... or being brave enough to choose a life of being a follower of Jesus. A life of change.
It is said that one can never really remain stagnant. You are either striving forward and challenging the world around you, or being swept downstream by the constant flow of humanity.
I can say quite easily that I choose Christ. Words come quickly to my mouth full of gratitude and love for Him who saved me from sin.
And yet.
And yet, there is still the part of me that fears change. That clings to the old, that allows me to become stuck in this feeling of being 'oddly placed.'
So shall I strive forward, facing change and challenge with a smile? Shall I strive to become all that God wishes of me?
Or shall I sink backward into the old?
Who will win?
