On the can

Of all the places life takes me to in a day, it is routinely the room which houses a toilet that God chooses to speak. I guess this could be called evidence of his humour?
Anyway, that’s how it happened again today.
To put this lesson into context let’s begin at the beginning.

Melancholy descended before I even awoke. The night’s dreams lingered well into the morning, muddying the line between fiction and reality. The whole day was intended for melancholy. Fittingly, I feel as heavy as the clouds pregnant with rain, eager to rid myself of this burden.

Oh melodramatic! I know. So melodramatic. Why can’t you just speak like a normal person, Louise? But I am earnestly encountering a crisis of identity. And thus, I can’t muster the strength to convey it in any other words but the ones that flow so emotionally from my typing fingers.

The burden in question? “Who am I?” A question that is both elementary and self-centered in theme, and yet rests at the forefront of my contemplation.

Initially my tendency is always to explain either a) what I do or b) who I am connected to in relationships. I am a teacher. I am Brigitte Carroll’s daughter. But outside of these things, who am I, Louise, when I do nothing and know no one? I find that I am not only unable to muster a response but I am also terrified of what the truth might be.

For the first time in my life, that I recall, I am without title, position, competence, experience or use. In addition, I am neither intimately connected to nor known by the people I am in daily relationship with. This might sound too analytical, but it’s creating profound uneasiness because I am forced to question the very foundation of my faith. Can I possibly be unknown and useless and still be in God’s will, still be loved by him? Of course the theological side of my mind says, bien sur, don’t be ridiculous, that’s the point! But the part of me that has held my false identity so close for so long is rather reluctant to let these things go. I am seeking the peace to just BE, rather than the need to DO. It is quite contrary to both my culture and my upbringing. We are people of competence and action. How ironic God would bring me all the way to Africa –where there is so much to DO – to learn to do nothing. To wait. I know the adage, we do nothing but what he does through us, but I must confess, I’m not sure I’ve ever done nothing and genuinely been patient enough to wait.

This morning I read:
He will cut down the proud. That lofty tree will be made low. Isaiah 10:33

It caused me to panic; pain is inevitable in this journey away from the will of Louise and into the will of God!

Less than an hour later while sitting on the can (why always the bathroom, Lord?) I read a tiny line in a story about a tree who was excited to be turned, by the carpenter, into a treasure chest.
And herein is the riddle: the tree must be cut down, made low, chiseled and sanded and formed into new and unnatural positions. Only then can it hope to serve any noble purpose.

Ugh. As much as I wish I could tell you how excited I am to serve this purpose he’s intended me for, I must admit I am very reluctant to be chopped down.

And so I am having a melancholy day. The clouds and I are somber as we experiment with the profound consequences of our existence. But, after this full day of rain, there’s a rainbow of promise for sun tomorrow. Perhaps with the morning, the clouds and I will already be able to see how this rain has made way for a tiny green sprout that wasn’t there before, proving even a trace of growth.