On the race, we like to use an analogy about marbles to describe different ways that people think about things they are experiencing or learning. In this analogy each marble represents a thought or idea, the jar represents the brain, and each marble outside of the jar represents a thought or idea that is spoken aloud. First, we have our internal processors. When deciding what to say, they grab their jar of marbles, sit there in silence while they dig around looking for just the right one. When they find the thought they have been looking for, they pull it out and present it to their audience. Others are outward processors. These individuals grab their jar of marbles, dump them out on the table, and sort through them until they find the right one.
I am a little bit of both. With more simple ideas and discussions, I can easily function as an inward processor. When life gets heavy or hard or if I am thinking about a more complicated topic or argument, I most definitely function as an outward processor. I am also a slow processor. And ironically (or as expected for someone with this quality), I just discovered this a month or two ago.
By living in close community with people, I have the opportunity to come alongside teammates and friends as they grow and change while being blessed, in return, by their company and wisdom. One of the greatest things we can do in coming alongside one another and listen. I get to listen to others process and learn, struggle and grow and in turn they listen to me as I do the same.
Through listening to many of my friends and teammates, I realized that it seems others are able to move through life lessons quickly, gleaning as much as they can and jumping on to the next lesson. As soon as I realized this, I began comparing the speed of my growth to those around me. At this point I found out that my processing moves at approximately the speed of, well… glaciers.
I began to doubt the sincerity of my desire to grow and change or that I am just not trying hard enough to change. I became frustrated that I had to talk out the exact same issue out over and over again in conversations with the same people. I started feeling like I was a burden to the amazing friends and family that have listened to me spend months talking out the same struggle, only to have the process restart with a new idea. You know who you are.
And, after much external processing, I realized that it was okay. It is okay that I am on my eighth month of learning about faith and trust. It’s okay that I don’t have a specific new topic that God tells me I’m learning about each month.
Since I’m a slow processor, I get to learn about topics in great depth. I’ve spent over seven months learning about “faith” and “trust”, and what that looks like applied to many different aspects of my life. I get to take my time applying faith and trust to my struggles with doubt, my past, passions, skills, gifts, every-day interactions, my future, my dreams, and the people I love.
When God made me he knew that I wouldn’t actually learn anything if I flew through the lesson. While I might learn it, at least for a while, it would be gone in a few weeks or a month’s time. Instead, I learn things in layers. I find a topic and cling to it as I realize and practice what it means to relinquish control and have faith over many different aspects of my life.
So, at least sometimes, this means that I need to search for the right jar, spill all my marbles out onto the nearest surface (or person), sift through them until I find the one I want, carefully pull it out, then proceed tell you about it for a while. Or maybe even a long while. Who knows, maybe we’ll even have to come back to it in a few ice ages so I can tell you about how I found a microscopic bubble in the glass.
