Snapping Into Focus

I've written of late about the flurry of activity I've been in not just recently, but in a more extended sense as well, this rush of change that has been my life in the last year. I was anticipating throughout April the nice, uncluttered calendar I found when I turned the page to May.

Little did I know how different it would be, complete with my husband home more often (which is wonderful) because he is looking for a new job (which has its definite downside). It was a cherry-on-the-whipped-cream kind of touch for me to eat way too much wheat-based cake last weekend and simultaneously forgot my daily dose of 5-HTP, which about as silly as me going out driving without my glasses on. Sometimes moments like that can get downright ugly for me, but in this case somehow it all mushed together to produce a sort of snapping into focus moment for me.

And what I mean by that is I see things I've seen before, but suddenly they look outlined in thick black magic marker. This is important. Pay attention over here.

One of those directives for me is time spent in Scripture. Today I started reading Jeremiah. In just the opening verses, I was struck by the fact that the book starts with the prophet recalling when the word of the Lord began coming to him, and when it culminated: the exile. There is a plan in life that God unfolds to us, sometimes by announcing the whole kit and kaboodle right from the start, when none of it makes sense or is even imaginable. Then time passes, and finally there's some sense of what at least some of it meant. And we still look back on Jeremiah's prophecy today and still unpack it. And it all started where everything God does starts: dealing with the personal relationship between God and (in this case) Jeremiah. Don't say you're too young. Go wherever I send you and say whatever I tell you.

So this tells me I don't have to understand "all the reasons" why I have certain needs, why my children have the personalities they do, why I have certain people and situations in my life. Life isn't about understanding why. It's about engaging the what, obedient to the reality. The why does and will make complete and perfect sense; of that I am absolutely sure. God doesn't play with us. We might even get a glimpse or a rough idea of the meaning while we still live. Great! But not vital.

So what snaps into focus are obvious things that have become more than abstract ideas. For one, the primary time focus of my life is the formation of my children. Not should be, is, regardless of how I handle my part. I realize that so many of the things that have stretched my heart of late are the ways that God reaches them through the stuff of my life. For another, my primary form of prayer and sacrifice and penance is domestic life. Again, a complete no-brainer, but it is so easy to just say "yeah, it's my vocation, blah blah blah" and not find any real, lived meaning in laundry, cleaning, cooking, building lego creations and serving in the community.

And there are things more difficult to articulate. The people who surround and intersect with my life are a far different crowd than they were, say, five years ago. That is to say, there was no crowd five years ago. I've said to lots of people over the last few months that my natural comfort zone is in the back of a closet, with the door closed, with a book (maybe a hymnal) and a flashlight. I'd probably have to include a computer to be honest. People can be bewildering and overwhelming to me, because I'm an absorber; much time in the course of my relationships with people is spent simply taking them in. Others are quick to size up a situation, and sometimes that serves everyone very well. I have to do lots of taking in, and I may never get around to sizing up, and sometimes that doesn't serve me well at all. But what snaps into focus for me is what I ultimately desire for people, the beckoning from God that grows in my heart, as I take them in: heaven, healing, Jesus, conversion. All four (and more) say the one thing in my vocabulary. This is where that domestic prayer and sacrifice and penance come in. This is the breath of my day. As I allow the love of God to flow into my heart, through my heart to the people in my life, there is that moment of meeting, and then as I allow my love to be lifted back up to Him with them in it, imploring the one thing God desires for them, this is the breath of my day, if breathe I do.

This is what matters, and this is really all that matters. Everything is brought into order around that which matters.