The Gradual Journey

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability–and that it may take a very long time…only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

It has been a spring of indecision, doubt,and emotional/mental turmoil. I can’t remember the last time I had been through a time of being so uncertain about what the future would hold for me. I had convinced myself that the entire universe had conspired against me and that nothing was working out and nothing would ever work out. I had the words impossible on my every breath, and it mired me in despair.

I guess you can say that I don’t like not knowing.

I was looking into the face of the unknown, the lack of promises, and I was being battered down. And I was allowing myself to lose. This stage of instability is frightening because I do not know how long it will last. I know that I am on the path to somewhere, but treading water in the middle of the vast ocean is a daunting task. I was ready to give up and take an easy road. But then one day I saw what I took for a sign. It reminded me that I was just in the middle of my story and all great stories include the parts where the hero is not quite sure of his or her path. I started to become more content with uncertainty, I began to just trust that everything would work out. And slowly, I think it is. I don’t know how long it will take, and it very well may take a very long time, but instead of living in fear, I am now choosing to live in excitement of who that me will be who waits on the other side. The me I am becoming as I sit here and type this, trusting that there are just as many lessons to be learned along the path of uncertainty and the unknown as when I get there.