Saturday, August 3, 2013

What the Hell Am I Doing?

By this point in my life, I've made a few long distance moves. Three, in fact, after college, which is its own sort of crazy, life-altering long distance move. Each time, there's a moment when reality begins to settle in and I wonder, "What the hell am I doing?"

It's a bit of fear and anxiety. It's mostly questioning my sanity, wondering if what I'm doing isn't crazy after all. When I started seminary, that moment came when I was sitting in my (crappy) campus housing apartment, during the middle of one of the worst heat waves Atlanta has ever seen. It was over a hundred degrees every day that month; the inside temperature of the poorly insulated, old windowed apartment never got below eighty, even at night. And one day, sitting there, came the question, "What the hell am I doing?" 

When I moved to Kansas City, the question came somewhere in Illinois, driving across a bridge. The woman riding with me was talking on the phone; I was spending too much time in my own head, even as I drove the UHaul down the road, towing my truck behind. I will never again drive a UHaul and tow a vehicle if there's any way I can avoid it. Looking into the distance, driving through what then felt like the middle of nowhere, I started asking, "What the hell am I doing?"

And when I moved to Phoenix, the question somewhere in New Mexico, the land of beautiful rocks and no cell phone service. I made it across Kansas, which apparently has no McDonald's or chain gas stations west of Lawrence, to Oklahoma and Texas, but in New Mexico, I started to question things. I think it was the abandoned town I drove through. Driving across western states gives new meaning to what I think of as the middle of nowhere. So I wondered, "What the hell am I doing?"

I don't know if that question ever goes away in the midst of major life changes. For young adults, though, those major changes are often a way of life rather than occasional. Young adulthood is the time for education and starting a career wherever it can be started. Those things often mean physical location changes and even more often mean spiritual and mental location changes. We're transients of a different sort, but transients just the same.

My answer to, "What the hell am I doing?" has ended, each time, with the claim that I'm following God. To Atlanta. To Kansas City. To Phoenix. I still hold to that claim.

More than that, though, I am convinced that God is just fine with my questions of "What the hell am I doing?" And all of our moments best summed up by "What the hell am I doing?"In fact, even if I was following my own whims and fantasies, God would be there, too.

For that's a place of faith, too. Whenever I think of my life's absurdity and God's presence in that, a scene from the show Judging Amy, when a former Roman Catholic priest now living as a woman until he can afford gender reassignment surgery, says, "Faith is the belief that it will all make sense in the end."

Until then, it's ok to keep asking, "What the hell am I doing?" God's there, too.




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