Real Life
C.S. Lewis wrote to his friend, Arthur Greeves:
20 December 1943
"Things are pretty bad here. Minto’s varicose ulcer gets worse and worse, domestic help harder and harder to come by. Sometimes I am very unhappy, but less so than I have often been in what were (by external standards) better times.
The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’, or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination. This at least is what I see at moments of insight: but it’s hard to remember it all the time—I know your problems must be much the same as mine (with the important difference that mine are of my own making, a very appropriate punishment and, like all God’s punishments, a chance for expiation.)"
(The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume II: Family Letters 1905-1931)
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Do you ever long for a different life, or realize you've been waiting for something, someone, somewhere?
"Some day when I . . . "
"As soon as I . . . "
"After I finish . . . "
"One day I hope I can . . . "
"When I get to . . . "
"I plan to . . . "
Lewis, too, must have uttered such prefaces, as he admitted to the difficulty of remaining curious and interested in the quotidian details of daily living. Perhaps, though, like Lewis, we also have moments of "insight" when we realize and lean into the reality of now, into the things from which we unwittingly run.
Recent years have brought unexpected twists and turns for all of us, and the curves in the road have often felt more like hairpin turns. Lately, though, I've tried very hard to be aware of the back-door in-breaking of the Spirit in my life. I've tried to remind myself that in a year or two, I'll look back and see it much more clearly. In moments when my yearning for who-knows-what overwhelms, I try to remember to put my hand on my heart and acknowledge that longing as good, and remind myself that God sees, God knows that longing.
I also try to remind myself that wholeness and wholeheartedness are the things God desires for me, for you, for the world.
That is the business He is about.
In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis explores longing:
"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same." (from Mere Christianity, Macmillan Publishing, 1952, pg. 120)
Isn't that wonderfully corrective?
Here's what has been percolating in my heart lately: Perhaps the "stuckness" we often feel is not "stuckness" at all, but rather, a stop along the way? Much like a long road trip during which we have to stop, get gas, buy provisions and snacks, look at the map, and prepare for the next leg of the journey? What we really want is to arrive, but stops are necessary in order that when we do arrive, we are in a better state than we would be had we not stopped.
I'm finding it's important to hold my longing in one hand and my reality in the other, to hold the two in tension. Why do I need to be here? Do I trust that God is aware? Do I trust that he is interested? This is not a "total sovereignty" argument in the spirit of Calvin, which often paints God as a micro-manager. Rather, it is my fledgling belief, instead, that God is present, aware, and lovingly calling me to greater wholeness. And the best place to do that is here.
I could go on pondering "on paper," but suffice to say I want to want the "now," this ordinary, unpretentious life. I long to lean in a little more closely to this oft-painful life. I also want to put my feet on the floor each morning, and, whether I want to or not, to believe that this "stop" on the way is important, and through it God is at work, recycling, reworking, restructuring. As Lewis wrote, I want to see these so-called "interruptions" as "the life God is sending day by day."
By His tender grace, and in his mercy, may it be so.