Carpe Diem, I Suppose

Nearly three years ago I wrote of the fear that accompanies embarking on the grand collegiate adventure. Now I’m surrounded by graduation announcements, addresses, and books of stamps. The adventure hasn’t been so bad. In fact, most of my undergrad experience has been delightful.

But the fear hasn’t subsided. Actually, it seems to have morphed.

Aside from the wonderful friends and the professors who have so graciously mentored me—the memories made and knowledge attained—I also encountered that moment when life got real. For as long as I can remember, there’s been a plan. The details were hazy at times, but the structure was always there. Kindergarten. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. College. Graduation. And there it ends. For twenty-one years, I’ve assumed that I would make it to this point. What comes next, God only knows.

The life becoming real part comes with the shattering of that assumption.

Tomorrow is not guaranteed. Cliché, yes, but I had a hard time fully grasping it when I thought we were all invincible. My world couldn’t possibly be touched.

Then a good friend earns her degree while warding off a brain tumor. A professor teaches through cancer. A friend’s mother undergoes major heart surgery. Doctors diagnose my aunt with a rare cancer.  My dad suffers a mild but wholly unexpected heart attack. My mom finds herself looking for another position after thirty-plus years with the same hospital. A friend’s mom suffers a stroke.

My plan (what little there is left in it) may be broken at any moment, and that realization left me with a fear that that moment must be near at hand. Vague, “call me when you get a moment” texts accelerate my heartbeat, and my thoughts of the future are inclined to assume that I will always be in one area, clinging to what I’ve always known in the hopes that I can keep everyone and everything secure through sheer willpower. In my lawyerlike wrestlings with God, I adopt the stance that as soon as I let concern over all I hold dear go, He will take them all away; that I know this logic to be entirely illogical is of no consequence. I cling to everyone, and I will make all things well. My fear will hold life together.

Lies.

Joy Davidman won’t let me forget it. She challenges me: “Our life is based on fear; if we should ever grow brave, what on earth would become of us?” Grrar. She’s right. But if I let go, then I’ve let go. I don’t control it anymore. Sorry for the cynicism, Elsa, but it’s not easy.

But that’s out of my hands. Yes, everything I know that’s safe and ordered might be obliterated in ten minutes’ time—it was for families in Oso and China and Crimea. It’s the most terrifying thought my mind entertains at the moment, and I can’t do anything about. I can’t make all things well. Yet Julian of Norwich wrote that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

So…what will happen if I make my goal bravery? What if I attempt to put aside what Davidman calls “the sin of fear”? What if I accept that whatever happens now, someday all things will indeed be “well”—whatever that means? What if I let go?

I haven’t the foggiest. I guess I’ll find out soon enough. 

For the moment, I’m merely working to accept that my God is neither a tame God nor a safe God. He is simply and complexly a good God. “Christ never offered us security,” Davidman tells me. I hate it, but I revel it in it—one of the great paradoxes His nature elicits. Sigh. And all shall be well…

And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.
     T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets: Little Gidding, III