Eating our jam and pierogi's

I came home from work today thinking the same thing that I've been thinking after work for the last few weeks, and maybe most of my lazy life; all I want to do is eat ice cream and watch a movie. I don't know if it was my husband's persistence in convincing me to go to bed on time, or the kale I threw into my afternoon smoothie, but instead of watching a movie, I picked up a book that a good friend of mine recommended.  I want to share an excerpt from it here...

"I've lived much of my life with the ridiculous assumption that I will eventually get to the bottom of things - the bottom of housework, the bottom of bad habits, the bottom of God. At some point I will have cleared all the mess away and left my home and myself and the world clean and articulate. Like Iris Gaines says in the movie The Natural, 'I believe we have two lives... the life we learn with and the life we live after that.' I sometimes live with the apparent headlong intent of getting to that second life. I launch new campaigns to organize my house. I pursue conversation with an almost desperate intensity, as if each one might be leading to a conclusion that will finally settle it all. It feels as if I am perpetually trying to clear a path so that I can get to some assumed destination, which 'was from the beginning, a measured distance away, standing in the ordinary light like some plain house.' It makes me think of the first few lines of J.M Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello: 'There is first of all the problem of the opening, namely how to get from where we are- which is, as yet, nowhere-- to the far bank. It is a simple bridging problem, a problem of knocking together a bridge.' That is what I'm always trying to do: knock together a bridge. Earlier today Mark and I had a conversation about the story of Jesus going to the home of Mary and Martha. Martha busied herself with work, trying to earn the right to sit down with her guest. Like me, Martha was a bridge builder. 'We're smart people,' mark said, 'we could spend our lives erecting problems, which would then have to be reasoned through. It is wrong to assume there would ever be an end.' Mary, instead sat at the feet of Jesus and listened; Mary was on the far bank. At some point, in order to have faith at all, we have to act as if we are already there. 'Let us assume that, however it may have been done, it is done. Let us take it that the bridge is built and crossed, that we can put it out of our mind. We have left behind the territory in which we were. We are in the far country where we want to be.'  I'm not really trying to say that you have to be done with reason. I'm glad I've spent some time fretting with Martha in the kitchen, it's helped me.... At some point I'll just have to take a step into the far country, or stop imagining that I'm not there already."    ---- Amy Andrews in Love & Salt

I like to feel secure. I like to know my environment and to control it - or at least believe that I could if I wanted to. I like to put pierogi's in the freezer more than I like to take them out to eat them. I like to look at jars of jam on the shelf more than I like to spread it on my bread. I like figure things out, to build bridges. I am a Martha. And, I like to know that I've thought of every possibility and I am choosing the best path, building the best bridge I can... in my power, wisdom and strength. As I'm writing this it seems so obvious how much I'm limiting myself. I am illustrating my own backdrop. I have been so stressed out about what David and I are going to do with our lives... how are we going to make enough money, which job should I take, where is Sitka headed, is the housing market going to crash... etc... thinking that if I make the right decision, if I build this bridge just right, we will be where we want to be. So here I am again grasping at contentment. Wanting to look at what is in front of me, and watch it, smiling. We are where we want to be - together, in the hands of a knowing God, in a beautiful town, a beautiful summer, living these first precious months of Lucas' life with him as much as possible, eating pierogi's and jam....
                     So here are some pierogi's and jam for your enjoyment...

We're getting back into The swing of things. Homemade pierogi, fresh sockeye.... Mmmmm

worn down and the small answer.

We just got home yesterday from out trip. I am exhausted and it feels like a faded light, a heaviness that seeps deeply into me. I am impatient and unkind. I feel so far from joy and fullness. And I'm searching for something to blame- something to hide under. But when I stare back at myself, I see it's just me at the end of me... at the end of a month of treating myself to all things good, and easy, and tasty without discipline or regret. It's been wonderful and blessed, and that's the irony. I have been so caught up in me that the fullness of God is a far and distant reality. I have this need to pour out my soul, to empty myself of myself... but I feel so heavy I don't know if I can begin.

I've spent the last month choosing my pleasures. It's trained me well... now I feel acutely a pressure to choose my life. We saw Grant and Lecia get married, set off for adventures with purpose and passion. We saw all my old chums in Poland and their life and community - my perception skewed positively by my very elementary understanding of the language - in it all I hear and see what I choose. I compare. I see Slawek and Bogusia living in beautiful Krakow, no desire to go somewhere else, to make a statement by leaving. I see their fellowship which seems so isolated from the West's spirit of discontentment clothed as wealth, prosperity and freedom. I thought I was successful in running away from it, running back in time to Alaska. But I was wrong. It has followed me and will follow me because it is a foul smelling flower growing in my heart. I came home and it felt so good, for like 5 minutes, and then I started thinking, fearing, wondering. Wondering- that's my killer - what it would be like to be Bogusia, Laura, Lynette, Lecia - to study in Venice, to get a Doctorate in Psychology, to wear beautiful leather heels, a scarf and sip latte's on a stone street - and I feel trapped inside myself. We just got to travel the world and instead of being sated and joyful because of the beauty that I experienced all across the globe, I become jealous and scared that the beautiful things about our life in Alaska are false. And that I am just as lost, just as busy, just as anonymous, just as discontent here as anywhere. And worse - I don't even have a clue about what to do, what I want, if I should want at all. I have been eating and resting and buying and spending all I want, that it has scraped away at me. In consuming life ravenously, I feel so ironically empty that I feel unable to do anything except lay on the couch, thinking of the next enjoyment. What is my purpose? to glorify God? What does that mean? to serve others? to raise a child who sees others? Where are we to be? Does it matter? I just don't know. I don't know at all.

I threw this prayer up this morning, after sleeping 10 hours, interrupted by Lucas' exasperated cries at the 10 hour time change and flying fatigue. I read a verse that said "A plan in the heart of man is like deep water. But a man of understanding draws it out."  There it is. I feel lost in the deep waters of my own plans, tired of swimming after my own fulfillment. There's got to be a resting place. I'm worn out. My last plea is for God to draw out for me my next plan, for today, or maybe tomorrow.

It's pitiful to write this negative rant after being so privileged to take 4 weeks off work and see 4 countries, tasting the sweetness and love of so many people close to my heart. I promise my next post will be about how completely awesome our trip was. But for now, I've got to get through this jet lag and stop swimming for a while. I'm going to pray, make some soup, and maybe take a nap.