“HOLD ME FAST. HOLD  ME FAST, ‘CAUSE I’M A HOPELESS WANDERER.”

I was listening to Mumford & Sons this morning after a long bout with pain and frustration and screaming at my kids and my heart just cracked wide open.This one line unzipped me and let all the contents of days and months and years of pain spill out. I am a hopeless wanderer. I saw years of wandering flash before me and knew instantly what all my current mama pain is about. I have been struggling in my heart to find a career, a path for myself. I long for a thing that can allow my heart to feel settled and fulfilled while still finding the time to raise my daughters. I want to work on their schedule and no more...maybe a little less....and I want to make a million dollars doing it. But I just can’t seem to sort it out, and worse, I feel trapped. I am in pain and feel lost trying to sort it. It’s as if this one thing might define me and so I am terrified that I will pick the wrong thing. I’m running out of time, after all. I’m 40! I’ve been tooling around for years, not landing on a thing. Wandering.

The thing is, it’s about The Pain. Since The Pain, I have roamed from place to place, heart to heart, home to home. I haven’t searched as much as I’ve floated. I am easily intrigued. I am explorer, true. But it’s more than that. I have been refusing to stay put, refusing to get past the excitement and into the comfort of really being somewhere. There is a time in a new job or home where everything feels great. The honeymoon, I guess. Things are arranged just as I want them, everything feels on track and right, goals have been met. Then there is all the time that follows. Things get dingy, they lose their shine. They take on a new shape and there are crumbs. This phase pleads for new goals. And that’s when I wander. My life as I’ve known it has been one uproot after another. From the get go, there was no time to bloom where I was planted. There was only the floating. It’s what I know. And boy, can I plant myself. But I don’t really know how to put down roots. I am the queen of adventure. I am brave and willing and capable of many odd things like adaptive scuba, building ropes courses, working in an ER, teaching and training people who have autism...but I don’t know how to set roots. So this motherhood gig? Not so simple for the likes of me. This career choosing? Totally out of my genre. I cannot fathom how the rest of you successful people do it. It is foreign to me. And I feel so sad about that. 

I have been lucky to have a few amazing souls in my life who have loved me through the wandering. They have willingly and gently tethered me to this world that we share and allowed me to float, knowing my need to do so. They hang near, ever willing to let go of the string, always aware that I might go at any moment. After all, if you love something, you have to set it free. I am so grateful for you who tether me. I don’t know where I would be without you and your thin, gentle strings. In truth, it is my heart that you have lovingly held. More than that, it is the light that you carry that illuminates my path. You have showed me the grace and love of 1,000 sunrises by holding me gently in place and letting me float, having long since given up the notion that I may some day come down. I love you. Thank you. 

“I WILL LEARN, I WILL LEARN TO LOVE THE SKIES I’M UNDER.”

So here’s the deal: I’m tired of floating. I feel like God’s voice can’t find me out here. The breeze feels more like wind and I’m bloated. Worse yet, I can’t hear you very well. I want to come down. I want to look in your face. I want to hear my own pulse, to follow my feet, to go where I’m meant to go. I can’t do that up here in the floating. There’s no way to steer and when I want to change direction, it takes sooooo loooooong. It’s true what they say about your problems following you wherever you go. I haven’t been running from them, really. But like hot pavement, the pain is easier to bear if you just keep moving a little. I have gathered more than enough life experience to write a great novel. I have more than enough interest to keep me entertained right here for a lifetime (or two) in any number of careers. So let’s give it a shot, huh? Let’s see what roots feel like. 

<insert panic attack here>

I have had more than two really amazing prospects for this year and I have turned them all down. There is something (this thing right here) happening in my heart that needs my attention, and God keeps asking me to wait. The whole of it (this thing), is really too big to discern, but there is an energy and excitement behind it, driving it like none I have ever experienced. It sound a lot like this in my head: 

ooooooooooo. How about a class? 

nope. 

Seminary? 

nope. 

Oh, hey, let’s apply for grad school! 

nonono. wait. 

uuuuuuuumok. But maybe another drawing thing in the meantime? 

nooooo. 

Well then I’ll just plan to walk every other day and alternate yoga and swim with weight lifting. That way I stay busy and I get RIPPED. 

uh-uh. 

More political wrangling? I can work on the 2014 campaign.

noooooo way.

Damn. You want me to just sit here and wait for a revelation? OOOOO. Is it the rapture?? Is this about the Mayan calendar thing? Cause that didn’t happen, neither did Y2K....or Jesus returning. 

sigh. 

Damnit.

I am so, so uncomfortable with this. You have to know that. If you know me, you have to know that it is. If you’ve tethered me, you definitely know it. (taps foot) But it’s big and it’s worth it, and it’s something. So I’m willing. I will wait. I will simply stop the floating and stand here, completely rooted and wait. Hit me, God....gently. Bowl me over, but don’t knock me down. I'm game.