IMPATIENCE

Yeah. So I have this wonderful little dream about "leaving the driving to God", and I'm all happy and content to do so.

And a few days later, I'm back to the usual up and down. I want certain things to happen in my life. I've been working for them, striving for them. The desire has been placed in my heart - by God I feel. I keep submitting that desire to His will.

And yet it keeps coming back. That impulse to cry out "How long, oh Lord? How long do I wait? When will something happen?" What it's really about is "When will I get what I want?"

I live in Hollywood, and have to street park. Every night. And there are a lot of people doing the same thing. Tonight, I got home after 7:30 in the evening and circled the neighborhood looking for a parking spot. And circled. And circled. And there wasn't anything within a three block (or so) radius of my apartment building. Round and round the area for 25 minutes, getting more and more frustrated. Because the frustration would (I knew) eat into my concentration for the chores I meant to address when I did get through my door. Because it's just darn irritating to spend 25 minutes hunting for a parking spot.

Even as I circled, part of my mind was comparing the business of just finding a parking spot to the "bigger" matter of moving on with my writing ambitions. I was wanting a spot moderately near my apartment, just as I'm wanting to move onward in my writing. But the spots just weren't there. I finally resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to park much further away from my apartment than I wanted, and I came round a corner to head that way. And just as I was passing near my building on the way there, someone pulled out of a spot across the street from the building. I made a quick turn around and got parked.

That sort of thing happens a lot to me. I want something a lot. But it's only when I let go of it, and accept that I'll probably not get what I want, God opens something up. And yet, in spite of the frequency with which this type of interaction happens, I still slide back into that impatience of wanting to get what I want now. It is very hard to leave it completely in His hands. I keep wanting to nudge Him.

THE UNSEEN DRIVER

After taking three months to think about what I really want to do with this blog, I've decided to try and get more regular. I think way too much, which ends up holding me back from actually posting something. So, let's see how I do from here on.

I had a dream a couple of nights ago. There was a lot of spiritual turmoil going on in my life, upsetting me. And I'm waiting to hear about a couple of bits of writing that were submitted, one to a book publisher, the other to a script agent. I'm trying to wait without being anxious, but like many writers, I can get insecure. So this particular dream struck me as very interesting.

In the dream, I was driving across an island. The road went absolutely straight, but up and down some gentle hills. I also knew that this particular island was a floating island, floating on the sea. I don't know why that knowledge was important, but that's just the way it was.

Anyway, at one point I suddenly wasn't in the driver's seat. Instead I was sitting in the passenger side, and nobody was in the driver's seat. Or maybe "Nobody". But it seemed right and proper that it should be so, and anyway, the car kept going straight onward. And then after a bit, up ahead on the road I saw something, like a person walking on the side of the road, and it seemed right that I should reach over and make a little correction to the steering wheel. And suddenly I was back in the driver's seat.

I woke up then.

At first, the dream just seemed odd to me. But when I sat down to record it in my journal, describing it for myself, it seemed highly relevant for all sorts of things.

There really are times when we have to "leave the driving to God". I think that's what the dream was telling me. It is right and proper to do so. To be able to do that without worrying or fussing or trying to interfere, that's the hard part. It runs counter to our logic. We say "No one's steering the car!" Well, no one we can SEE. But God doesn't leave us alone. He doesn't put on a light show for us, usually. But He is there, keeping us on track, if we let Him do it. And then, once we're past whatever point needed His direct driving, it's back in our hands.

I like to think that I trust God that completely all the time, but I know I don't. I often find myself wondering "What can I do to move things along more?" Sometimes there are things for me to do, but just as often (if not more often), I simply have to leave it in God's hands and wait. The important thing is just staying on that straight road.