Today I was given the gift of information.
I am the first person in my family (with the exception of my great Aunt who got a Masters in Teaching) to consider going to graduate school. My immediate family is not an academic one and the fact that I have done moderately well at school has always been praised, but viewed as an activity very particular to me, like a little stroke of luck. Education has always been valued and respected in my family, but it has not been celebrated.
I'll be honest and say that I know little of the culture surrounding graduate school, PhD programs, or what the life of an academic is actually like. Grad school is becoming more and more appealing as the formulated structures of undergrad become increasingly oppressive but it is still a nebulous concept to me.
People have told me vague things like... 'You are going to grad school, right?' 'You should get your PhD...' and I just want to tell them, "I want to I just don't know how." It's the constant conversation I have with myself, finding the equilibrium between upbringing and ambition, the way I was nurtured and what my nature is. But there are people in my life that just tell me information. They tell me that if I love sociology that I have to be a professor, otherwise I will apply sociology to a field, but won't be a student of it. They teach me what it means to be deeply, almost spiritually, invested in learning and what brightness it can bring to the world.
I probably think too much, which sounds like arrogance, but I over analyze the hell out of everything. I don't need people to question me about what I want to do, to help me ferret out my suppressed inner longings. I just need people to tell me like it is because I don't even know enough to begin to evaluate my interest. Do I want to be a professor? Ha! I don't know. I don't know what I want to do tonight. Worrying about it won't help, just like planning out my life won't help. I want to be more rooted in now, in the people in my life now, in the place of life I am now. I want to find faith and trust for this time, finding fullness through the richness of God now, not just leaning into an ambiguous better tomorrow.
Perhaps temptations of future thinking are little cracks my wholeness, signs of my brokenness if you will. I want to think about a better, more complete tomorrow because there is hope for wholeness in a place that is not yet broken for me. But trust and faith in the present push me deeper into the reality that I am broken. I am broken and dying and fumbling to find something better all of the fucking time. I want to think about tomorrow because it is a salve on the disappointment of today. Accepting Grace for today means that I have to learn how to accept the fact that God loved me today, and that is something that I embarrassingly do not understand.
Further musings:
Sin is brokenness. It leads to bondage.
I am in bondage because I am a broken.
I sin because I am in bondage.
My sin does not make me a sinner, brokenness is in my nature.
Jesus come to show us what lives of freedom look like.
The cross was breaking of bondage.
Jesus chose to die for my freedom, he did not do it to satiate God's wrath.
Grace is the medium that connects my brokenness to God's perfect love.
Grace is probably the most confusing thing in my life.
Grace seems more robust than 'getting something I do not deserve'.
What if the only thing between me and God was me?
Why do I usually assume that that they are reluctant and difficult to impress?
Maybe the question should not be, 'How can God love me?'
It seems to have already been answered.
No comments:
Post a Comment