I didn't always understand that. I came to believe, as I grew up as my late-teens/early-twenties self, that things happened in the world and things happened in your life and there was only one way to look at it: sometimes it was good, sometimes it was bad, and there isn't much choice in the matter on my part. That, I acknowledge, was an incredibly passive, sad, view of the world (and of providence, for that matter). This view developed over my last few years of college and first year or so in the real world. Before then, I was always this hopeful, naive, idealist: brimming with optimism and wanting everything to have a shiny bow tied around it so we could all feel good about each other and everything.
And then, of course, I lived my life. Friends left me out. People let me down. Money didn't grow on trees. My faith was on and off, at best. My job was so stinking complicated and hard. I couldn't understand the disappointment, the fears, the hard stuff that came at me, and I saw it all in a very passive manner. How could I control it if someone wanted to be just plain mean to me? What choice did I have in that matter? A lot of stuff ended up being imperfect and un-tie-up-able-in-a-shiny-bow and it was a whiny, icky, mindset to have.
But what I'm coming to feel, and know, more and more, is that those things weren't and aren't totally hopeless, I would just refuse to see the hope. I had a choice: the good or the bad. Most of my adult life has been a jumbled up mess of those two things (this broken and beautiful world almost usually is) and I always, always, always have had that choice. Which side was I going to see?
Instead of seeing hurt feelings and broken friendship as the end-all-be-all to a season of my college life, I could have leaned into that and found a deeper sense of gratitude for the friends that loved me for who I was, who didn't make me jump through hoops to feel like I belonged, who didn't make me defend who I was at every turn. I could have chosen the good, and lived in hope, even if that was a hard choice to make.
Instead of crying in despair at lunch time (way too often) during that first year of teaching, I could have focused on the student who told me that she felt so smart when I talked to her, remembering that to that one girl, my year of struggling was worth it. I could have chosen the good, and lived in hope, even if that was a hard choice to make.
Looking back, there are many moments where I passively felt despair, when I instead could have actively made a better choice, a harder one, to see the good. To see the growth, and to feel the remaking of new things. Now, letsbereal, it is way easier to wallow in the all too common routine of gossiping, finger-pointing, and the throwing-up-of-hands at the injustice and wrongdoing that comes in our direction. It's easier to whine, choose to see the bad, choose to settle on the thing that makes us afraid, and call it a day. Looking back, though, I'm seeing that it was during those hard times when I was actually growing up, being prepared for the good and hard and real things that exist in this world. Those hard times, in hindsight, have not squandered my hope, they have built it up, and I'm starting to see small moments of that old optimist coming out again. I'm no fool to think that the happenings of this world are random. These days I'm starting to see the hand of Providence intertwining itself into my life in small and big ways all along. It makes me think of that one line, the line I can always say in those times of choice:
"What that person meant for evil against me, God meant it for good."
I think I want to be better at looking past the evil and choosing the good instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment