Turbulence

I don’t think I have ever been on such a consistently bumpy ride. As we crossed the Atlantic, it was like the airplane was actually on the ocean surface riding the waves . . . and they were rough seas. It made sermon writing difficult on the computer (I have a youth conference starting in less than a week!) because I kept hitting the wrong keys! In fact I have just re-wrote this sentence 4 times! I am afraid to take my hands off of the computer because it will probably fly across the cabin! I think the technical word for this flopping across the sky is turbulence. Well it matches my emotions pretty well.

I got Heidi settled into college, at least after a fashion . . . who knows where she will find the money to actually stay in college. Then I took a much needed week of vacation with my buddy Kimmy and we fished until my hands hurt from casting and retrieving, not to mention more than a few holes in my hand from hooks. And now I am in this turbulence tossed sardine-can, 5.5 miles above the planet surface and my heart is keeping pace with the plane turbulence. I haven’t started throwing up like others, but I might.

This emotional turbulence comes from living in two worlds. I am leaving the one where Heidi, my parents, my brother, my nieces are now living and Kimmy will fish without me for the next couple of years; and I am going to the other, where Jake, Helen and Brenda are waiting for me, youth conferences are waiting for me, students at the Theological Seminary are waiting for me. If I can speak frankly here (would you expect less?) I want to live in both. There are precious relationships in both worlds and I want it all. I do not want to have to choose one over the other, I do not want to have to stay in only one. I want it all (at least if I don’t fall out of this seat at any moment).

It seems like my spiritual life has lots of the same parallels. I want this world and the next, but unlike the dilemma I was describing above, I can’t keep a foot in both . . . spiritually this is an all or nothing gig. And just when I think I have decided which one I am going to throw everything I have toward, turbulence comes along and makes me sick and I can’t decide today . . . am I going to follow my heart or am I going to follow Jesus?