“You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can. dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” (Rainer Rilke)
In my first few hours home I was faced with this deep truth looking at me while I was eating my Chipotle burrito bowl at the food court, because it was in fact on my cup. It’s funny how in such a simple moment on an object that I am least expecting God to speak to me through – He does.
There I was sitting in the Philadelphia airport, by myself, a fresh arrival into America after leaving the place my heart wanted to be the most, Cambodia. The minute the airplane wheels hit American soil all the questions started filling my mind as tears welled up in my eyes, “what now?” – “how do you begin to make the next steps? And what even are those steps?!” – “how was your trip?” – “what are you going to say to all the questions that everyone will ask you?” – “How do I love where I am currently and continue to love where I want to be?”
Demanding is the only way to describe my sudden need for answers. What are the answers? I need to know the answers!
That was when I looked at the words written on the side of my cup. And despite the ever-present demand for answers that my mind seemed to be signaling out to all of my body I found peace in between lines I was reading, the meaning behind those words. We ask questions to get the answers that we think will solve all uncertainty or fill in any blanks or gaps in thought but we never step back and look at our questions. We I never listen to my question first and try to understand why I am asking something to begin with. I rush on to hear the answer.
I want to learn to love the questions, to live them.
What is next? There isn’t a concrete answer to that yet but I want to love it regardless. I want to feel free in that question, in that unknown.
How do I explain my Race? My immediate answer, “it was incredible!” but there is so much more depth to it that I don’t know the words to describe. I want to love the feeling of depth that comes with that question and the lack of words there is to truly describe something so immensely powerful and connected to my soul.
How do I love where I am currently and continue to love where I want to be (Cambodia)? This is one that I never think there is a truly an answer to. I think it requires me having to love and live that question daily and then more and more clarity will come, then more and more hope will come.
“I had no idea how to love and live these questions. Gradually, though, I figured out the obvious, that doing so meant investing quality time with the questions themselves—listening, tending, wondering, contemplating, gestating, waiting.” (Sue Monk Kidd)
In the midst of having the pressure surrounding me on all sides to figure out all the answers to my future, as if I have some magic crystal ball or superhero abilities to see every detail of my life, I am deciding to embrace the questions. As I choose to embrace them in their awkward, vague, looming ways I see their hope and freedom. That they weren’t scary thoughts to be skipped over and straight ahead to an answer so we could file the question away, but they were the revelation themselves.
In a question that has yet to be answered and filed away there is the room to dream, and to dream wildly. And after all, to me that seems to be the point of life: dream and free yourself to live the dream.
What questions do I want to live and love?
What is the dream and purpose of my life?
Who am I to the Father?
What does loving look like today?
While I have answers to these questions in parts already I believe there is more to them, and more to the reason why I ask the question to begin with. We as humans toil over the questions of our purpose continually and I believe it is because we are longing to the do what truly makes us feel alive. And then once we are alive to our purpose it inspires others to wake to their existence as well.
Give the questions that you have been toiling over lately thought. See them, listen to them, search them out, love and live them. And maybe in living the question the answer will show itself.
“The two questions I chose to focus on so many years ago are still revealing possibilities to me. They’ve been the kind of provocative companions one can spend a lifetime loving and living.” (Sue Monk Kidd)
