: ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ :
I was 22 years old, flying to Japan after college for my first Real Job*. When the Korean Air flight attendants brought around the duty-free catalogs, it seemed like the thing to do, given my new identity as a globe-trotting sophisticate, to order something. Ah-ha! Here was something chocolate, something affordable (my Real Job had not yet netted me my first paycheck), something imported and exotic. [It rather betrays my true identity as a rube, doesn't it, that I'd never even heard of Toblerone before this!]
So I bought some. I ate it in-flight, feeling so grown-up, so urbane, so in-the-know. A fitting start to my new jet-setting career.
*[my Real Job turned out to be, in retrospect, a hilarious misnomer. I spent two years in the backwaters of Japan, "teaching" high school English through the Japanese government's JET Programme. I did spend time in the classrooms, and even, on occasion, got to do some lesson-planning, but most of my time was spent catching up on any reading I hadn't gotten done in college, doing crossword puzzles, creating bitmap art on Windows Paint, and customizing the appearance of my new laptop, with a little worksheet-creation, hangman-playing and pronunciation-modeling thrown in for good measure.]
: ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ :
Fast-forward sixteen years ... I am sitting at a worn kitchen table in my century-old farmhouse, overseeing the education of my children in rural Pennsylvania, dressed in a hand-me-down sweater and jeans that pre-date some of my children. Some sophisticate I turned out to be.
The contrast amused me this morning, as I drank my generic decaf coffee brewed the pre-Keurig way in a plain old drip coffeemaker. But as I wrote this post, I used thesaurus.com to help me find "urbane", and saw that sophisticate as a verb means to adulterate, to cheapen, contaminate, corrupt, degrade, falsify, taint, make impure, water down ... and I realized that sophistication has never really been the goal of my heart at all.
There is nothing I want more, truly, than to be unalloyed, pure, undiluted - aimed hard & undistracted at my Maker. And there is nothing harder, for me, than just being who He made me to be, and not who I think you'll want me to be.
During the past four months, I have gradually emerged - been freed, really - from the depression that has cocooned me for over a year. Part of this has been through teachings on God's design for us, and part of it was, I believe, the depression itself: born of weariness in mask-wearing, it gave me respite, a space in which to rest, and heal.
The depression itself, it seems, was a means to freedom. Which reminds me, again, of the chrysalis.
A jar waits on a shelf. One chrysalis hangs empty, a story of freedom attained. Two remain, and what they contain, whether dormant butterfly or wasp, or nothing, only God knows.
I wait, too. Only God knows His design for me, and whether sophisticate or rube, or something yet unimagined, He will bring it about in His good time. This I know.
: ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ :
