"Once again life's thrown me a curve/and it blew up right in my face/Once again life's rattled my nerves/can't you see that I'm stuck in the place/all because you've given me a breakdown/breakdown oh/breakdown, breakdown oh..." Relient K is one of those bands that has this habit of writing songs that pop into my head just when I'm needing to quantify my life and it feels like. And it does feel like that right now, as I face a wholly uncertain future that has been weighing on my mind despite my attempts to present a cavalier face to the world in day to day conversation. I mean, there are so many options and I'm feeling like I have to weigh and reweigh every single one of them to determine the pros and cons of each and now it's getting to the point where I just have to make a choice and take whatever comes.
I'm hitting the point of the breakdown, especially when this all comes at an especially insane time of the year with the holidays. Don't get me wrong, I love my family. I just have trouble existing in the same space as them sometimes. Holidays are always the time when I'm reminded just how much of an introvert I really am. I've not yet gotten to the point where I just need to take a day and hide in my room and not be around anyone yet. Maybe, if I take more care to get a couple of hours in each day like I'm doing right now I'll avoid that major breakdown point.
Still, it's not just holiday madness. It's also the wonderful equation of stress + short days (always depressing) + a natural low in the ebb and flow of my emotional well being. I'm not a generally anxious person, but when I get to the point where I need to do a bunch of stuff and the natural low makes it feel like I have to expend twice as much energy to get everything done... then stress happens. Then I get to the point where my head hits the pillow and my first thought is "oh God give me good sleep so I have a chance of surviving tomorrow without collapsing."
But even through all of this, at least this time, I'm looking for lessons to be learned throughout all this. Identifying areas where I'm really not handling things well and trying to work on those especially so I can go into the next season, whatever it ends up being, with a better set of skills to work with. I'm getting a real intense crash course in trusting God to provide (which He has, in fact. I mean, I got like a month and a half's worth of groceries in the space of a few days. I'm still in awe of that whole sequence of events). I'm getting a great set of lessons about diligence and motivation. And true to form, no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful (Hebrews 12 something... one of those verses I'll always remember because it was part of a Bobby McFerrin song).
And this is the part that I'm trying to really work on. We were listening to this book on tape about a fairly new field of bioengineering called biomimicry. The book is called the Shark's Paintbrush, written by the guy who more or less pioneered the field (at least form what he said in the book). I'm not even all that interested in the field, unlike my brother who is apparently enamored with it, but he said one thing that really caught my ear. Talking about his many breakdowns on the way to getting his ideas and products into the market, he said, "The trick is to turn a breakdown into a breakthrough." That caught my attention because it's a concept that's actually taught in my church, or at least the lessons I've been in. Like, that last hardest part where it seems like everything is going wrong is actually the point just before you finally push through to whatever it is you were going for. You just have to lean into it and be intentional about facing your issues. I'm good at facing my issues and acknowledging they're there. Sometimes I even wave, because many of them have been companions for a long time. I'm just not good at pressing into them and poking them until those weak spots become stronger. So I'm working on that. This fairly massive breakdown of a lack of job, possible lack of home, and a distinct not knowing if I'm going in the right direction with previous choices or if I need to admit that I was wrong and back pedal a bit to change course and right myself could turn into a major breakthrough if I can just get myself to press into it.
This verse also came to mind, thinking about how there is this mentality that life gets all hunky dory when you become a Christian. I thought of John 16:33b, "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." So it's like, Jesus totally tells us outright that it's not going to be easy. A story is boring without conflict, and I've already decided that I'm going to try and make my life a really good story. But He's still on my side, and He's overcome it all already. I just have to learn to walk it that. That will probably be one of my main goals in 2014. Walk in overcoming. Sounds fun!
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