the longest distance between two points

I'm two and a half months into my transition, and I confess, it has already cut straight through my defenses to deep places, the places of calling, identity, trust, hope, and love. The first week I was here, I thought my feelings of vulnerability stemmed from the fact that I didn't know my way around the city--a geographical disorientation. The second week, I realized there were layers of loneliness--people here didn't yet know me, so I felt as though I had to be on my best behavior when meeting them. The third week, I began to suspect something along the lines of a second depressive episode and resumed an antidepressant I'd been taking before. The fourth week, I only had space in my mind for sharp, unrelenting fears that convinced me of my own helplessness and inadequacy because I could not longer do my job--meeting and interacting with people, planning events, and implementing ministry structures.

It's been a harrowing road from that time to this. On the way, there have been many falls and many tears. The map that I had coming into this experience--expectations about how it would look to live here, what it would feel like to be on a new campus, and how long it would take to settle in--this map has been erased and redrawn many times. What I've seen is that I tend to draw straight lines because I'm looking for the shortest distance between two points. God's lines seldom follow my patterns. His lines weave in and out, up and down, back and forth all across the page, and halfway in, I despair that they will ever arrive at a destination. Yet how many great works of art have been created using only straight lines?

I've had to wrestle with the oversimplified view I have of how God works. Part of this has been challenging the polarities I use to decode the world: that is good, that is bad, this is easy, this is hard, this is a time when I should be mourning, and this is a time when I should be rejoicing. It is so, so difficult not to choose one side over the other. Sometimes I get in mourning mood and everything is so hard, so sad, so heavy. Then when God brings me an opportunity to rejoice, I reject it, and become even more lopsided in my lifestyle.

Yet in moments of deep joy, or even in moments of relative calm, anxious thoughts and feelings can still make their presence known. I tend to push these sensations away, distracting myself to avoid feeling them. I again lose touch with the living God who is in tune with this aspect of me and all humans.

I'm beginning to see that all of this complexity, as frustrating and confusing as it's been, is exactly the place God meets me. Because I can't hold the different pieces together on my own, I need someone with a way bigger perspective to get involved (see Colossians 1:17). The journey has involved steeping in the ways I already know how to relate to God--prayer, musical worship, Bible reading--as well as new discoveries--cognitive behavioral therapy, self-compassion, and mindfulness.

God is blazing a new path in my soul, and it is equally exciting and unnerving. It's what I signed up for when I decided to move, but it has looked SO different than I expected.