hope and the wounded healer

i spent some time today, processing some old thoughts over a cup of jasmine tea. it was a milieu of old thoughts of a old season, and the tea i bought last august. for some reason i never had the time to finish making pots of tea to use up the dry leaves, and i didn't have enough time to fully comprehend things- or work through questions i asked awhile ago.

advent. if i can liken advent to anything, it is like a flowerpot. to grow something in flowerpot, i have to first clear space in that pot, in expectation of dirt or seeds, or a plant. in the same way, we clear space in ourselves during the advent season, in expectation of a coming messiah, who promises to fill us. the very meaning of Christ being born is a welcoming of new soil, a new covenant to replace dry, lifeless dirt that we watched over faithfully, hoping for life.

and what will that new soil grow inside me? i don't know. this is, perhaps, a question i'll ask again everytime a season changes.

day by day. last semester i tried planning for the first time. at the start of the year i planned out what i would read every day, which days would be saved for writing and which for rest. though my days for reading would come, and a feeling of "i don't feel like it" came. and, looking back, what felt like laziness was a moderate depression. some things from my personal life were dragging me down, which made my plans difficult to follow through with.

in all my skilled planning i forgot to account for one thing- life. to have life, and to live it, is unpredictable. there are things that enter into our long term plans and undermine them- issues that even the best plans cannot control. i couldn't help it that i was depressed. its not something i thought was going to happen. as important as planning is, learning to live in the unpredictable day to day is key- its learning to live within those plans.

life, through my eyes, can't be lived a couple months in advance. we can't place joy, sorrow, heartbreak, or crying on a calender. we can't choose our stories, or how they will change us. we can't choose whats going to hurt, what will bring joy, or what will make us stop and wonder, in awe. having a set plan for some things is good, but when it comes to living life, feeling the rush of it stream down my arms, is one day at a time.

i think, all we can do is walk through the stuff of life, willing to learn whatever lesson God intends those things to bring.

tea. i think i drank a bit too much tea today. or, simply failed to balance the said tea with adequate nutrients... aka, food. i need to find some good new tea. having jasmine was all good and fine this year, but it feels lacking in the flavor category. and earl grey has it's moments, but drink the same tea everyday and it starts to feel like just that- the "same old tea". whatever.

...and so he did what countless punk-rock songs had told him to do so many times before: he lived his life.

-stranger than fiction