God in the Waters: A Metaphor, Part I

… There were also a few glittering, very rare moments
of peace and sweetness, when I felt the goodness and
familiarity of  people who loved me, when God’s voice
sounded tender and fatherly to my ears, when I was able to
release my breath and my fists for just a moment and float.

-Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet

Shauna Niequist writes about learning to swim in her book Bittersweet (you can download a PDF of the chapter “Learning to Swim” here).  And while I wasn’t exactly tracking with her swimming metaphor … I have a very different and much-loved personal metaphor about God and water and waves that I’ll share later … I did particularly love what she had to say about times of change and uncertainty and our response to them.  When I look at the last year and a half of my life — a time in which I’ve been unemployed, partially employed, and more-than-full-time employed, visited half a dozen new countries, lost loved ones, gained friends, moved, moved again, thought about moving a third time, thought about buying a house, refused to think about my career path, found a new church and a newer church — I know exactly what she mean when she writes:

Looking back now I can see that it was more than
anything a failure to believe in the story of who God is and
what he is doing in this world. Instead of living that story —
one of sacrifice and purpose and character —  I began to
live a much smaller story, and that story was only about me.

… even while I read
the mystics and the prophets, even while I prayed fervently,
even while I sat in church and begged for God to direct
my life, those things didn’t have a chance to transform me,
because under those actions and intentions was a rocky layer
of faithlessness, fear, and selfishness.

Yes, I have read the mystics and the prophets in the last year.  Yes, I have prayed fervently and sat in church and begged for God to direct my life, and, yes, during all those times and more, I privately indulged that same old nagging worry in the pit of my heart:  “What if there’s no plan?”  What if there is no grand work set out by God for me to accomplish, no thrilling and redemptive narrative I am supposed to be living and discovering?

I would by lying if I did not say that, even on my best days, I am tempted to thoroughly giving in to that fear — to surrender hopelessly to the idea that God has no plan for me and to slush through my days in oblivion.

But more and more, I think God is leading me elsewhere … to the idea that, maybe, that question “What is God’s plan for me?” is not at all the right question to be asking.  That, maybe, all my selfish impulses about my life and my “talents” (…yes, I am referring to the parable and to the grand tradition of theologically-sketchy-youth-group-talks about it) and my career path and my future are just that … selfish.  And that although I’ve spent the better part of 18 months refusing to listen to God, he is gently trying to lead me to just be here, and to attune more to Him and His story and His great, redemptive, thrilling work.

And that, if I am in a place where I am wholeheartedly and earnestly and honestly seeking God, I will never be in a place that is not His plan for me.

But, back to the floating.  I know what Shauna means about standing to face the waves of change and being dragged under and smashed to bits … because that’s what the last year and a half has been.  But, in the midst of all that, there have been those “few, glittering, very rare moments of peace and sweetness.”  Small reminders of what the shalom of God’s plan is and our hope for it in the future.  Brief tastes of the goodness of God.  Call them signposts, maybe — or an echo.  Something, though, that calls out to where we are, in this fallen world, from that holy and peaceful kingdom.

For these moments — these people, and their lives, and their actions, and a friendly pat on the shoulder, and a kind and true word, the chance to release and to just float — I am deeply grateful.

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