The Mundane
Sometimes, I marvel at the fact that I am a woman of faith because I tend to not function well when it comes to uncertainty and let’s be honest, faith is fraught with uncertainty no matter what a person chooses to believe in. As a Christian woman, many of the stories in the Bible can’t be proven and for the most part, I am okay with this and wouldn’t have it any other way. Part of being a person of faith is making the personal choice to throw yourself into the unknown. Maybe it happened exactly the way it’s written, maybe it didn’t? Maybe it will all work out, maybe it won’t? It’s up to each individual to choose what they want to believe and I appreciate the freedom that faith allows me to live my life with but sometimes the uncertainty that comes with being faithful in the unknown does overwhelm me.
I’m at a point in my life where I am uncertain of my future. For the 25 years, I have been alive, I’ve pretty much kept on the straight and narrow. I’ve done this mostly because I thought that I wouldn’t have to face uncertainty if I stayed on such a path.
Of course, I was wrong.
Despite my straight path, a fog has still somehow found a way to surround me and I don’t know what’s on the other side of all the fog. I don’t know when I’ll get another job, or if I’ll ever get married and have ONE child. I don’t know if I’ll ever publish a book or if I’ll ever have enough money to travel the world. I just don’t know if I’ll ever accomplish any of my goals at this point.
It all seems unlikely, for a myriad of reasons that are, unfortunately, rational. Though I have the required degrees, I don’t have enough experience to obtain the jobs I desire with the pay I desire and by the time I will have the experience that so many jobs require, ten years of my life will have passed by. I’ve missed my best opportunity to find a potential spouse in college and with the current state of dating in my generation, there isn’t much room for hope. Not to mention my clock is just ticking away and I’m not rushing to beat it. I’ve been avoiding my writing lately because the fear that it will never be good enough keeps seeping through my fingers every time I try to sit down and start typing. Not to mention I have no formal training or education in creative writing.
With all of this against me, It seems foolish to have faith that things will work out the way that I want them too. The reality is that I’m just not sure if things ever will work out. So much is up to circumstance or God as I like to say, and I honestly don’t know what God’s plans are for me.
Despite all the frustration I feel at the uncertainty of my life and even my faith, faith still remains an important part of my life because it is something that I need.
Yes, I believe in science and rationality. I work in public health, and completely understand the purpose of evidence-based methods and solutions to global problems and the importance of vaccinations. Science and rationality, however, don’t give me the hope I need to press forward on the straight path or any path for that matter. Rationally thinking about the state of my life as I have been for the past few months doesn’t make me want to keep applying for jobs and facing the inevitable rejection. It doesn’t make me convince myself to keep working on my novel despite the fact that I may never be able to get it published and no one may ever read it. If anything, rationality makes want to give up. It makes me want to sit against the gravel of the path I’ve chosen to follow, bury my head between my knees, and let the fog consume me.
Faith and faith alone is what helps me to keep pressing forward, despite the uncertainty of life. I need something more than just science and rationality. I need something that tells me that I’m not just here as part of some sort of process, but that I am here for a much bigger purpose and that I must press forward to discover that purpose. When I was a little girl, I never thought of science and God as being mutually exclusive of one another or even antagonistic towards one another. I just thought of God as having created science so that we humans could understand the natural world around us. In my mind, being able to understand and appreciate the mundane without having to understand the spiritual aspects of the mundane is one of the freedoms God has afforded us with.
When I struggle with doubting my faith or the importance of faith my favorite way to get perspective is through nature. Nature to me is that perfect balance of God and science. The perfect mixture of the mundane and the spiritual and how it all works together in creating a world that is much greater than me. A world where we all here for a purpose, no matter what path we choose to take. A world where though the paths we take may be different, the roads are still made of the same gravel.
I live on the east coast and I’ve only ever seen the Atlantic Ocean. I’ve been to Myrtle Beach several times and every time I go, I hope to find a “perfect seashell” on the shore. I usually don’t. I find the broken, chipped ones and settle for the least chipped one I can find. Last year, I did find the perfect seashell albeit it was a very very tiny one. Due to all the hurricanes that hit the east coast last year, I had quite a difficult time even making it to the beach, so finding that seashell was a huge accomplishment for me. I now have it sitting on my desk at work so that I won’t lose it.
One morning, I was feeling down on my faith as I was separating the mundane from God again instead of realizing their connection. Doubt was creeping in, and as always, I prayed that God would be with me through the doubt. While at work, I looked down at my seashell on my desk and remembered that I found this tiny little shell among thousands and thousands of grains of sand. Rationally, it was unlikely that I ever would. Not only is the seashell the color of sand, but it was also so tiny. I don’t know exactly how I found it among the grains, and yet I did, and while it is a mundane and ordinary shell created through some type of natural process, it reminds me of the sheer irrationality of me and it ends up in the same place in the same time on the same shore. I was looking for a perfect seashell, and for once, I was in the right place, at the right time, to find this one hidden in the sand.
Maybe it’s a coincidence, or maybe it’s the perfect balance of the mundane and the spiritual that I am always seeking. I choose to believe in the latter because it is that balance that helps me continue to press forward through the fog.
