As a kid, nothing seemed out of my reach.
There weren’t any challenges.
Well, there was one. I wanted to be able to run 5 miles. My legs didn’t carry me that far. But I wished they did.
Everything else was not a matter of “Am I able?” but a matter of “Am I allowed?”
So little was allowed. Music was suspect, Movies were suspect. Books were kind of suspect. Education, friends, people I might meet, life goals, all these things were suspect.
They might get in the way of “God’s will for my life.”
God didn’t want me to learn at a secular school. God didn’t want me to watch movies that Jesus wouldn’t watch. God’s will was not for me to saturate myself with “worldly” music or expose myself to the influence of non-christian friends.
Eating, talking on the phone, what clothes i wore and where I visited were all to be weighed in the scale of “What would be the Christian thing to do?”
The christian thing to do seemed to be to always be telling my non-christian friends to become christian.
But, as it happened, I wasn’t supposed to have non-christian friends.
This situation left me with a lot of time on my hands.
I read a lot. I had no guidance, really, so I just galloped after whatever caught my interest. Lots of austen, dickens. The entire shelf labeled “Young Adult” at the library. I discovered I liked those best.
But I had no one to talk to about what I read.
There was no challenge, really.
When I moved to Russia, I knew nothing. NO one expected me to know anything. I learned Russian when I was there, but that was the extent of the challenge.
THe trip was an exercise in gathering impressions.
It wasn’t until I moved back to the states, and got married that I started to really try to challenge myself.
I finally ran 5 miles. It wasn’t that hard. I just kept at it.
Then we moved to California. The bay area.
HERE, at last, the bar was raised.
People knew things. There was a challenge in the air. People my age had jobs, and careers. they had interests and specialties. Intellectual pursuits.
whoa. What the heck is this? I felt incredibly inadequate. My little bits of stuff, my little interests and areas of knowledge were pathetic!
it took me quite a while to rise to the challenge. I felt so frustrated, because I knew that i was capable, I just hadn’t actually DONE any of these things yet.
My self-evaluation left me really lacking. I had to compensate.
I started to. I got some stuff happening. I wasn’t at the top, but I got in the game. I got some self-respect, I got going.
By the time I left, I felt pretty good about myself. I felt like I was making progress. I had something to show.
Now i live in LA.
I feel back at the bottom. Whoa. There is so much going on here. I have so much I want to be doing, want to have DONE already. There is a rushing torrent of creativity going through this town, I want to be swimming in the middle of it.
I am not there yet. The bar just took a big jump.
I want to be part of it. But I don’t want to lose myself, either.
I have to take it slow, but I have some serious ground to cover.
I guess I just have to keep at it. A little every day.
