THINGS I DON’T KNOW

As the saying goes, you don’t know what you don’t know. But I know I don’t know A LOT. Recently I discovered that St. Augustine was African (born to Roman parents) and that amaryllis bulbs can live without soil. Who knew? (Probably everybody but me.) Anyway, since my word for the year is “awareness,” my first lesson has been that I have a profound lack of it.

All we have is our own brains and experiences, so we assume we’re ground zero…until we discover we’re not. Or put another way, there are six+ billion ground zeros running around, all thinking our own viewpoints are the font of accuracy, that we’re in control, and that everyone should see things as we do.

But sometimes we get things wrong. And nobody can predict what tomorrow holds. And we have no idea how our prayers and hearts’ desires will turn out. These are things we don’t know.

Sometimes we just need to let go. You can’t cross to the other side of a big room and simultaneously hold on to the doorknob. For example, I’ve had to let go of some inaccurate ideas about God. Make mid-course corrections. A deconstruction of sorts. It took me years to get up my courage, but my sense of wonder won out. And lo and behold, the depths I’m discovering! I could write a book about it. (I just might.) And I couldn’t have done it without letting go. Reading scripture more accurately has done wonders for my soul.

And about what tomorrow brings…we can choose not to think about it…we can fear…or we can trust. I think it takes a whole lot of spiritual evolution to trust. As Mr. Beaver said of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when asked if Aslan was safe, “Safe? Of course he’s not safe. But he’s good.” Letting go doesn’t feel safe…unless we trust the goodness.

And finally, about those prayers and hearts’ desires. I had a 28-year-old prayer answered just this morning. I’m still waiting on others. So yeah, there are a lot of things I don’t know. I’m getting more and more comfortable with that. And the more comfortable I get, the better I feel. Having to sub in for God is exhausting. Trusting that God’s got this, as otherworldly as that sounds, is freedom.