“Your life looks so interesting on social media”, she said.
My high school friend was paying me a compliment, I suppose, but it made me stop for a moment.
Here I am between classes. It’s been days since I got a full night of sleep, I am behind in studying for my anatomy and chemistry classes, and only yesterday my roommates gently made me aware of my growing pile of dishes in the sink. I need to get information to my graphic designer for my CD, plan that Bible study, and I’m pretty sure I have at least 18 texts to which I owe a response. This is what my life looks like in real-time, baby.
There are other things too—good realities worth acknowledging—for sure. My life includes nights where I stay up too late receiving healing prayer from a friend, running into people I know at coffee shops, learning fascinating things about how the world and the body work, dancing and being silly in the kitchen, enjoying the fresh snow, and worshiping unhindered at church. I love my classes, can joke around with my professors, have the world’s best roommates, and I am bringing my dream of creating a CD to fruition as we chip away at the songs in the studio.
Things are good. And hard. Life is “I am accomplishing a marathon”-type-good, rather than “I am riding a Ferris wheel”-type-good.
I’ve told several friends that I feel like I’m living three lives in the space of one right now: a constant juggling where I can focus the whole of my attention on a certain matter only for a few moments before throwing it into the air with desperate supplications that God would keep it going. Being a full-time student with demanding classes, preparing emotionally/spiritually/financially/logistically for the world race, and producing a CD means that “Grace, grace, Lord”, is an oft-muttered prayer right now. Happily, my God is one who consistently pours out copious amounts of his enabling presence and power as I ask.
I’m learning that the perfect balance I seek and crave is an illusion. Actually, most of the types of perfection I crave are an illusion! I’m beginning to realize the advice I would so often tell my residents when I was an RA, “Perfection is not a realistic goal”.
And so with that, I press on. I can do a good job without being perfect, and can honor the Lord even with messy hair and laundry to be done.
“I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.” Psalm 16:8
