If It Is What I Wanted...

It's almost 8am, but I've actually been awake since 6am. My bladder initially woke me up, so instead of trying to go back to sleep knowing that I'd just be kidding myself that I'd be able to ignore the calling of the bathroom, I got up with sleepy eyes and allowed the walls to direct me to my intended destination. Crawling back into bed, my first thought was that in the few minutes it took me to get to the bathroom and back, I was now awake. Not just oh-it-may-take-me-a-few-minutes-to-go-back-to-sleep awake, but WIDE awake. What?!?

After turning off the TV at midnight and then listening to a Gateway message on my iPod, I knew that I had not clocked nearly enough hours to satisfy the nightly requirement for rest, let alone catch up on any of the sleep I'd missed out on the past two nights since the AC broke.

So there I laid. Awake. In a dark, 75 degree, cool room. My eyes wide open. My instinct telling me that no matter how hard I wished for it, I wasn't going back to sleep. [Maybe now that my bedroom has the ability to stave off the heat of the summer day, I'll find an hour or so to curl up in bed and take a nap ... maybe.]

Not wanting to forfeit the cool of the AC for the heat of the rest of the house, I grabbed my iPod and opened Tweetdeck to see who else was awake - and had twittered any thoughts of their morning. I came across a new tweet from Kate McDonald with photos of her house remodeling, and since I follow her blog as closely as I follow my best friend's, I clicked the link and took a tour of her yet-to-be-finished home. From that blog I ended up bouncing to various other blogs of hers and came across an old one titled Jesus Tell Me What I Want #1 and then read Thoughts On Feminism, another oldie.

Both intrigued and stirred me, but the Jesus blog really got me thinking, especially two of the opening passage quotes she used:

“If it is what I wanted, why am I so disappointed when I get it? If what a man really wanted was food, how could he be disappointed when the food arrived?” ~ C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress

“Take a good, hard look at your life. Think it over.
You have spent a lot of money, but you haven’t much to show for it.
You keep filling up your plates, but you never get filled up.
You keep drinking, and drinking and drinking, but you’re always thirsty.
You put on a layer of clothes, but you can’t get warm...
[That is why the God-of-the-Angel-Armies said:]
Take a good, hard look at your life. Think it over.”
~ Haggai 1:5-7, The Message Bible

Lying in bed after reading this blog, I began to think about how yesterday changed the course of our lives; how 24 hours earlier I was so unsettled about signing another lease for this house and the next day the decision was made to move ... just like "that". I wasn't awake because the reality of it all had finally settled on me and now my brain was alert and in panic mode. Actually, my mind began to wonder about the ebb and flow of life itself and how we never really wake up one day expecting our lives to be much different than the day before. There's a lot of thought behind that one sentence, but my intent for this blog is not centered on that thought, so I'll walk past that rabbit trail for now.


If it is what I wanted...

Those six words really intrigued me, really resonated with me, really stopped me in my reading tracks and made me go, "Hmmm". [Things That Make You Go Hmmm. Can you hear the 80's dance song playing in your head? I can ... unfortunately.]

Do we really ever know what we want? Or is what we want consistently in flux like the seasons of the year? Is what we want supposed to change as we grow? Or is what we want just a fickle selfishness? Is what we want really tied into what we need? Or is what we want just that carrot on the end of the string that we'll constantly chase but never really obtain?

I'm not sure I have any answers to my philosophical questions. Waking up this morning, I fully realized that I won't be waking up in this house for much more than another 30 days or so. With that thought in mind, I took a picture from where I sit on my bed when blogging, looking out the window to the scene I've watched change with the seasons of this past year.

Right now the trees are still green and full of leaves. When I initially moved in, they were turning brown and getting ready for autumn. I've watched as the trees lost all their leaves, being left with nothing but a winter nakedness. I've watched rain fall and saturate the bark until it couldn't hold any more water. I've watched snow pile up and tree limbs break under the weight of it all. I've watched as the leaf buds began to appear, whispering promises of new life as spring arrived. And soon, as we close the doors on this house to move on to something different, the leaves will once again be preparing for autumn; another year of life saying its good-byes.

All that to ask, "If this house is what we thought we wanted a year ago, even to the point where we kicked ourselves for not locking in a two-year lease, how can our wants be so different just 365 days later?" Did our wants change or did the reality of what we thought we wanted shift so as not to really satisfy the unspoken wants? Those wants we settled on because 'right now' worked...

Again, philosophical questions without a desire to really dig in and answer them. Maybe the answers aren't necessary right now. Maybe the questions themselves are the first, big hurdle to cross and the answers will be revealed in due time.

Due time. What is 'due time' anyway, and how do we ever know if now is 'due' or somewhere down the road is 'due'? Ahhh ... questions.