Living Where I Am

Recently, a good friend of mine wrote in her blog Tattered, Torn, and Mended about how important it is for us to be usable where we are, to "commit [our] whole life to serving the King, regardless of the emotional, physical, and spiritual challenges that come with that assignment." This got me thinking of the times in my life where I have been blinded by my own emotional, physical, and spiritual challenges.

My husband and I recently moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. We live up on a mesa, above the main part of the city, a little off the beaten path, and have loved almost every moment of it. Some nights, I look down at the city with such a love in my heart for the people as I gaze at the lights their lives are making and pray for their needs to be met and for their hearts to find a place to belong. Immediately after moving here, Thomas and I both noticed that a peace, that had otherwise alluded us, rushed over our lives. At this point, it really does seem like all our troubles have been left behind in the last town we hailed from.

Living there had been a painful lesson for the both of us for many different reasons. It was the first place that we moved to after a rather tumultuous year of my husband's recovery from a traumatic brain injury. We had also been recently married. We were learning how to live life together as husband and wife, attempting to become more involved in God's church, and learning to live life in a way that didn't include rehab facilities, parents' graciously donated homes, and a mass amount of family around us all the time.

The first year and a half of our marriage, I spent more time in a funk than out of a funk. Everything about this new life that I had spent the last year waiting to live fell flat within six months. I had put the core of who I was into what I was doing and had been rejected. The next seventeen months was spent putting all of my energy into maintaining composure and protecting what was left of my dignity. These were sad and lonely times. They were dark times as well, where at moments I could feel the enemy sitting on my chest as he tried to prevent me from taking another life sustaining breath. The days dragged on, but eventually God led me to good people with pure motives who wanted to know me and love me for who I was. It is only now that I see what may have happened during this time: I had finally begun to live in the present moment.

Reading my friend's blog post gave me the last section of pieces to connect two sides of a puzzle I have been working on. The first side consists of my desire to be useable by God where I am and in the second lies the truth that living in the present moment is the best way to live life for many reasons which are so numerous, I dare not broach the topic now.

I have been working on the first part of the puzzle for a long time, believing that it was complete as it was. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (1942, 1996) revealed to me the second side of the puzzle only very recently, yet until now, I thought it was the first part of a new puzzle.

***The Screwtape Letters is a satirical Christian apologetic novel... The story takes the form of a series of letters from a senior demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, a Junior Tempter. The uncle's mentorship pertains to the nephew's responsiblity for securing the damnation of a British man known only as "the patient" (special thanks to Wikipedia, the best source for to the point information, for that three sentence synopsis).***

Through this book, the Lord has revealed to me one many purposes of the present time, which I have so much neglected in my life. Screwtape writes to his nephew, "He (God) therefore, I believe, wants them to attend cheifly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity." (p.75, emphasis mine). I had begun to feel better once I began to live in the present moment perhaps, as Screwtape purports, because it is the only time that gives a glimpse of hope because is touches the very thing my life was meant for, a perfect eternity. I had spent so much time living in the past, remembering the horrific aftermath of my husband's accident, and mulling over the future, which both "inflames hope and fear" (p.76), that I had been unable to live in the moment that I was actually living in. Going back to the original intention of this post, I was unable to be used where I was because I was not truly living where I was. The obesession of my mind over past events and future happenings created blind spots in my perception of reality. They kept me focused on the gravity of the emotional, physical, and spiritual challenges of my place rather than the blessed nature of my being here at all!

Life is full of teaching moments such as this, and surely, this "finished" puzzle will be added to in the future. The Lord continues to remind me how much I need him and to redeem me from my own inability, ignorance, and stupidity. This is one of those "aha" moments where I finally realize the key to happiness is being able to be used by him who always has my best at heart (and that there is much more that goes into being used by him than I had originally thought). I pray I never forget how much I, daily, need him and never hold myself in too high esteem to learn something from this life of which I will always be pupil.
    
To read my wise friend's blog post, check out Tattered, Torn, and Mended