PLATES, THEY WILL SHIFT

It's been a few months since I've written this. It's still true, so I post it now.

"Plates, they will shift, houses will shake, fences will drift. We will awake only to find —nothing's the same." – "Home Is A Fire," Death Cab for Cutie

Artists of all colors talk about reinventing themselves. But then, if you are a moving human, no matter your artistic ability, you also know about reinvention – even if that is not what you call it: these shifting plates, these drifting fences, these dissimilar days even when the places and people might remain the same.

I wonder about our vision: we see as if in a kaleidoscope – each conversation becomes a shard of glass, shaped and colored particularly to its particulars, and that becomes a part of our vision. We may self-discover via world-discovery via God-discovery. A new country, a new job, a new backyard moves our fences and our landscapes change, slide sideways, flip over.

Even our lack of action becomes a part of our vision: the failure to learn more about someone with whom we've had a bad first impression; the reluctancy to have that truth talk; avoidance of fixing the microwave or calling your best friend. Maybe we are constantly stuck between two sticky particulars, maybe we are blind to yellows and greens, maybe we are altogether blind about how feelings and people and things are changing and when we'd like things to stay the way they are. Still, they do change. Good or bad, plates they will shift.

Good and bad, plates have shifted for me this year. I am grateful and I struggle. I'm new in ways and the same in others. I still feel as if I am in the upheaval of the last year of teaching at LCC International University and working with Christian Reformed World Missions. I've witnessed lots of friends' lives changing, many through marriage, this summer. I am moving northward again - Michigan. I am sorting out the shards of glass and trying to figure out how and where they fit in my vision, and, the internal processor that I am, this has been a bit difficult to do aloud. A great shout of thanks to all who've been patient with me through this silence.

The silence is beginning to crack and fissure at this point, largely due to my admittance of the bout of depression that has followed – or rather, has hummed right along with – the culture shock post-Lithuania. Conversation and medication go a long way into letting an internal processor out of her own head for a bit. More on that in awhile.

Plates that I rediscover newly each day by their shifting:

The Lord is good.

I am blessed beyond what I deserve.

The only logical response to these always-true statements is to give beyond what I currently imagine I am able to give.

It is so good to find these truths newly and differently each day.

Walk in the light as s/he is in the light; be grateful for every shifting plate; and find good ways to be new.