I can say with the utmost honestly that the last few months of readjustment have been some of the hardest existential struggles I have had in my life. In some ways I feel like I am back in High School, angst-ily trying to figure out who I am. Other times I feel like I'm back in college, full of faith reckoning and finding out how my spiritual, social, and experiential views can coincide.
I am half Agony and half Hope and the Universe, at this moment often feels torn, twisting, an ungiving wasteland.
People talk to me of sacrifice, of the time I spent in Africa, and how much was taken from me. Some even stating, or wondering, if maybe I was not meant to go, that the difficulty I faced to even get into the Peace Corps was a sign I wasn't meant to go, that I mistook the Call to leave with my own desires for volunteerism and justice.
This of course I don't see as true, I was meant to go, and gain much from my time there. It was my great joy to go, to be used up for a purpose I recognised as a mighty one. I, however, cannot look at my life and actions as a sacrifice or else I am receiving the glory -- not God.
If I continue look at my circumstances as what was taken from me, I risk being nothing more than a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making ME happy. As if I was the centre of it!
Instead I want to be a force of nature, a powerhouse to be reckoned with.
Troubles I have, no matter how difficult and dark and seemingly consuming of my life they might be, I have been promised more. These are light and momentary, achieving for me more then I can see right now.
So "Keep the earth below my feet ... / Help me learn from where I have been / Keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn."
