Learning to Float

Sometimes I feel like I've jumped ship from my own life. Like I'm barely holding my head above the crashing waves around me, as I watch the ship I was on sail away over the horizon. And in all honesty sometimes I feel like I didn't jump, but rather God pushed me out of my possibly too comfortable ship. The waves still rage and I often feel like He's abandoned me to this sea of chaos without a life vest.

Sometimes I'm glad He pushed me out of the ship. Sometimes I'm glad life isn't at all what I expected it to be. But now. Right now at 2:23 in the morning, when I can't sleep because of anxiety, because of the fear that maybe He has abandoned me, the threat that life as I know it is over, I am not glad.

That ship I was on was nice. It held promise of better things, of stability, of permanence, of never really having to rely on God for my daily bread, not really. This. This flailing about in the open sea was exhilarating in the beginning. Something new. The unknown. But the thrill has gone now. My limbs are tired from treading water and I fear that if I stop, if I let go, I'll sink. Sink so deep that there will be no chance of revival. So I must tread. I must try to stay above water.

But I've felt the waves crash overhead. I've experienced the discombobulation of not knowing up from down. And somehow, this whole time of treading I've not drown, I've received strength when I didn't think I had anything left in me, and though I don't see Him and sometimes believe He sailed away with my life, I know He has not abandoned, I know it's been His hand always lifting my head back up from the overwhelming sea.

I find myself often looking for that ship I left one way or another. Maybe I should be looking for something totally different as that ship really has sailed. My feet are not set on solid ground just yet. Every time I feel they are, the earth shifts and I lose my footing, resuming the treading position. So I'm slowly learning not to trust the ground I find and instead maybe learn to float.