We Shall Get In [jessi]

There are moments in life where I lose sight of God’s purpose and plan for my life. In short, I panic. Here’s one such moment I recorded in January of this year:

I woke up this morning with a parched mouth and the devastatingly firm conviction that I have already made my first irrevocably wrong major life choice. More than a year ago. Oh, to turn back the hands of time, right? I think I really did know it at the time, and I made the wrong decision anyway.

And how easy it is to decide to be dissatisfied with life—to long for something different, more, or better—whether it’s something easily definable or something far off and hazy. The latter is more my tendency. I constantly wish for something new or different, but I don’t know what to wish for. I’ll look back on my year, on the eve of my next birthday, and mourn missed opportunities. Here’s a bit from an email to a friend about three weeks ago: I'm afraid that I'll slide through my whole life never having made any sort of difference.” It seems like this dissatisfaction, if fostered, nurtured and sympathized, only brings on depression.

But what if it has another purpose? This month, instead of sitting down and writing an essay of my own, I considered just posting the whole of C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory (published in full online at http://www.doxaweb.com/assets/doxa.pdf). I’ve been musing on it over the last two weeks. Lewis says, “If we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object.” So if that’s the case, I suppose that a general dissatisfaction with life could mean more than I thought it did.

Obviously, the disclaimer that applies here is that if there is something you do need to change, you change it. Often discontent means change is necessary. But if my restlessness of spirit is directionless, if it’s just there and I can’t shake it, maybe I should be thankful that what I feel and what I believe to be true in life are somewhat in alignment. I might feel like there’s something missing in life, but that’s because there is. Eternity is missing, and the things I think I desire won’t fill that need. I may try to replace it with friends and family, activities or education, but it doesn’t make a difference. There will always be an unfulfilled part of me.

Still speaking of that misplaced desire, Lewis says,

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

And this makes me think of the part in George MacDonald’s Lilith, where Mr. Vane sees a dove flying, and is told it is a prayer: “I listened, and heard—was it the sighing of a far-off musical wind—or the ghost of a music that had once been glad? Or did I indeed hear anything?” It also makes me think of Romans 8 where it talks about the whole of creation waiting for its fulfillment—the final redemption of humanity. So I guess that what I think I long for here on earth is merely a portent of things to come:

“We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled the air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves—that, though we cannot, yet these projections can enjoy in themselves that beauty, grace, and power of which Nature is the image. That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can’t. They tell us that “beauty born of a murmuring sound” will pass into a human face; but it won’t. Or not yet. For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendour of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and modern poetry, so false as history may be very near the truth as prophecy. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get in.”

Almost, but not yet.