First Posted 11-Dec-2014
When I was young, when (maybe not at the same time) I was down, calling a shelter or church social hall home, peril seemed imminent. If I didn’t handle something right then, trouble. A week was a long time. As I’ve aged, and as I’ve sought to calm my life down, the looming peril has moved further into the future. Now, having been in this house for three months, I realize the pending disaster I once felt as something which was imminent–next hour, has drifted off toward a further horizon. Yeah, theme repeated, but the memory of those days of living somewhere mid-air, body mid-ballistic arc toward a fast approaching impact with the ground, having leaped off the cliff to escape a different, seeming worse danger, are not far from me.
Where I am now, is at a familiar, yet uncomfortable pivot point. I have the house. It is furnished enough that I can live in it with relative comfort. That “keep-up-with-the-jones” itch I inherited from my Mom would have me taking on debt to *really* furnish this place in style. But, it’s an itch I’ve learned to avoid scratching, mostly. The house is good enough.
I got a job recently and am in training. My boss and a bunch of other folks are working hard to help me succeed. Ok, that last, the fact that I have support at work, is worth a pause. My way of narrating my life is as the black swan, the seeming ugly, unworthy duck. I tell my story as an outlier, as a misfit, a guy with issues who has survived. To be here, at a pivot point, where things are calm and success has been achieved to a degree, is again familiar and uncomfortable. It disrupts my dominant paradigm as an outlier. Yet, here I am. I am being set up for success. I have a boss who is behind me, cheering me on. My car, like my house, is serviceable. It needs things, but I’ve been buying cars that need things for over 13 years, so that’s not news. The car, though, hasn’t been towed since August, a track record I like. What I have to do is let it happen. Let this pivot point bless me, go ahead and own the black swan identity rather than remain attached to being an ugly duck. We all wish desperately for God to answer our prayers. When he does, though, we still have to be humble enough to accept the answered prayer with grace. Where it disrupts our dominant paradigm we have to let our attachment to our status-quo die to be replaced by God’s new dominant paradigm. Fine words. Whether I can embody them remains to be told. Let’s hope I can.