Treading water

Do you ever feel like life is passing by and your just treading water? Nothing bad is happening, nothing rocking the boat, life is just easy and moving along.

Life for us right now is pretty good, unless you ask Phoebe – she would tell you Olivia’s nightlight is “literally ruining her life”. 

On the whole though, the kids are happy and settled in school, they are making good friends and are flourishing. Carl has settled into his role as Vicar/Rector (whatever he is) life has settled. And instead of always living thinking about what will happen next; Carl’s job…college…curacy…incumbency, we now just get to live and be fully here and not thinking about what is coming next. 

Now don’t get me wrong, that all feels good and it’s nice to feel we’re putting down some roots which will last longer than 3 years but I’ve realised I spend most of my life living in the expectation, the excitement/anxiety of the what’s next. So now I feel like I don’t quite know what to do or what I’m doing. And if I’m honest I feel a bit lost and a bit empty and a lot inadequate. And if I’m really honest, I feel like my old masks are slipping themselves back on again, protecting me and keeping me safe.

And I wonder if after the ‘honeymoon period’ people will start to see me for how I see me and maybe they won’t like me so much.

Because now I’m listening to the old lies about myself again, that little stronghold that lets the devil in and it flipping gets me every time! “I’m not good enough, I’m boring, I’m self absorbed, I’m lazy, I’m fat & ugly, I need to do/be more” the list goes on but you get the idea of my areas of weakness.

And it’s so easy to listen to those lies and accept them as truth, and I say this from a place of currently believing them, I’m not out the other side but right in the fog searching for the truth. This isn’t my smartie pants post where I pretend to be all wise about what I’ve learnt but my cry from the pit of emptiness.

This is me reaching out to God asking him to reveal his truth and who he made me to be, not who I am as a result of x, y & z.

So that’s it, life goes along smoothly and we can sometimes slip back into relying on our own ability rather than God and then we get that reminder, sometimes gentle sometimes not, that it’s better to give the steering wheel of our lives over to God because thankfully he is a better driver and navigator than I am.

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