Up For Air
In recent months, the daily toil of our regular lives has been compounded by the pursuit of another space, another dream. By committing ourselves to building a new life in a new place, what had seemed a near insurmountable clutch of responsibilities, obligations, duties and the occasional pastime, expanded to encompass this new dream, skirting along the edge of madness and breaking, as most of us are wont to do at at least a few points in our lives. The task of renovating and selling our own home, along with securing some land on which to lay down roots, whilst keeping our current lives afloat, was incredibly taxing, but like all things worth doing, given to the kinds of feverish obsession that propels one beyond the confines of our usual capacity.
It dawned on me that all of us at home, the children even, are driven to our greatest points of creativity, growth, asceticism and adaptation, when we’re gripped by such a fervor, when all else fades to the edges of existence and you hurtle, headlong, moment by moment to the culmination of your given purpose. We see it when they hit the puzzles, their artwork, music, and at times, their writing. I know myself, that it’s been the days and weeks of feverish creative output that’s yielded the greatest results. And the work on the page feeds back to drive you onward, a momentum that cannot be cheated or swindled by any other process, any other design.
Our recent toil, now turning and spinning of its own accord, was driven by a wondrous sense of purpose that transcends the seeming impossibility of fitting in every detail and demand that pressed upon us. Having the house painted, the carpets replaced, the curtains renewed, the garden tamed, the whole thing spotless, whilst negotiating, wrangling and wrestling with the purchase of an acreage and ensuring that the kids are still well rested, fed, clothed, educated and at peace (to their own relative degrees), could only be worthwhile when building to something beautiful that calls us beyond the comfort and confines of what we know.
The demands of prayer, of art, of marriage and vocation are no different. We are sustained by something beyond us. Human faculty alone cannot bear the burden or sustain the demands of relentless details, demands, distractions. There must be room for grace, to work it’s way through the cracks when they inevitably appear. So many of us are able to look back, to wonder, how on earth we’re able to make it through a period of suffering or endeavor, with little logic to answer such a query. When there is no sleep, to peace, no warmth, no support… There He is, in a thousand unknown and unspeakable ways. Calling us forward, or dragging us, it may seem. Bound up in the belly of a whale, we’re carried forward to where we need to be.
But this is not my bind. We’re not being dragged begrudgingly, but step forward willingly, earnestly. I keep thinking of a beautiful expanse opening up before me. A small mountain range where the sky meets the earth. A row of trees that separate us from the road that keeps us connected to the wider world. I keep thinking of a back porch, with the next closest house hundreds of meters away. The kids scattered across the expanse, tending to animals, roaming at will, sun kissed and sound minded, nurtured by a community that holds Christ at its heart. I keep my mind fixed upon this, our promised land, and take another step. Then another. Up for air.