Another look at the future

I really, truly, do not know what to expect.

Over the last several weeks, it has become apparent that I am to let go, and let God. The more that I do this, the more easily things are flowing.

The life I might lead someday is unlike anything I've ever led before. I just spent some disheartening time combing through employment postings in another time zone, looking at alternatives, not wanting any of them. Actually feeling a sense like, "This is not what I'm supposed to do."

If events unfold in this unimaginable direction, I shall be busy and occupied with a full day's work, but I must let go of the feeling that I must earn a salary. When I listen in prayer, it is just as clear that I must not work in that eventuality, as it is that I must (and want to) if my life continues on its current course.

Moments later, I found my way to this post on Erica's blog:

I will pursue and produce but I will not do it in the frame of mind I have had until now, aka Must Self-Actualize or DIE!!! I am already living the Truth of my Heart. Nothing is ever going to be more dear to me than the ones who occupy my heart already, so why not acknowledge that the rest will be details and icing, stuff to hope for, but not make-it-or-break-my-neck stuff.

I had bought into the idea that because I can, as a young woman, supposedly have it all, that I must do so. And now. For the last few weeks my mind has been full of the things I have not accomplished; the possibilities of the future have become burdens. And spending all day feeling that weight is a real drain on the precious resources of today...

I am no longer a young woman, but, believe me, that feeling of pressure to "have it all" and "self-actualize" does not go away!

This has a kind of FlyLady feel to it: something I'm trying to organize which would be better off released from my life; something which doesn't make me smile. What makes me smile is weaving a world of comfort for someone I love, making sure that the trains run on time in the household, making it look easy and never letting that work impinge on the all-too-short moments we have together; teaching grandchildren to read and bake and think and sing and maybe even pray; knowing myself to be in the right place for me at last, as a woman, a Christian, and a friend.

I don't know if it can happen. I don't know if it will. But I feel more ready now than at any time in my life... and maybe that was part of the Plan.

It is no coincidence, I'm sure, that my current paid employment has just hit a mighty convenient lull this week, just as this mysterious process began to sort itself out in earnest. If there were to be a transition - and I'm not saying there will be, just if - it would be so much easier now than, perhaps, later.

I don't know what my future holds; but I know Who holds my future.