growing up

this week, i'm enjoying erik's ipod he left with me while he's at boot camp for the summer. i miss him already, as he is my oldest friend in chicago. last night, while my old roommate brenda and i sat on pillows at kopi cafe up in my old neighborhood (and erik's), i felt i missed him more. bren and i pointed through the windows across the street at our old apartment and reminisced about those two years in andersonville, those two years that went by faster than you can blink an eye.

time has always been really way too hard for me to comprehend. i find that the older i get, as the cliche goes, the less i know. last night, i thought that up until recently my life has been following all the general paths it's supposed to follow. everything has had a grade, a new lesson to learn, a new emotion to explore. even moving to chicago seemed right because it satisfied that expected "you just graduated college, and now it's time to enter the scary world and learn about yourself and be lost for a little while" feeling. but i don't know what to expect now. i'm still in that scary world, learning about myself, but now, i don't feel lost. i feel found in chicago, i feel seen, known, heard, understood.

so what next? i've decided that's the wrong question. all my life, i've given god great plans for what i want my future to look like. and they're all great ... for the most part (one option involves me owning the world and re-ordering it in some kind of socialist fashion where everything is equal and fair, u2 concerts aren't so expensive and starbucks always serves fair trade coffee). but it hasn't quite worked out the way i've planned. i mean, my plans are good, but his are better. he always sees right through to what will be BEST for me. and what's more, MUCH more, is that really, it's not even about me, or anything to do with me. he'll take care of the plans for my life. he promised. all i have to do is love him (insert ridiculously happy expression of "freedom!" here). i feel this gigantic weight come rolling off my shoulders. work, friends, dating, home, family, residence - all that little stuff taken care of. because all i have to do is love him. and all the big stuff - justice, peace, freedom, joy, mercy, compassion - well, loving him is it. it's the answer. he's so much bigger than i give him credit for. maybe we should change that cliche from, "the older i get, the less i know" to "the older i grow, the bigger he gets."

i like that i can have one focus now. i'm going to intentionally focus on that one thing. no more what's next. i just want to enjoy loving him in the right now.