Continuing the week's theme of existential crisis, I realised last night that I am pissed off that God kicked my calling into gear in September. I'm pissed off because since then I have been feeling more and more overwhelmed, and it's all because of this vocation/calling/discernment thing. It's like a smog that has descended onto my life and clouded everything that I thought I knew and scrambled my coping mechanisms.
Life was pretty good back in August. I had got together with the man I had been in love with for years in my first proper relationship, I had improved vastly at doing my job since graduating the year before, I had been employed consistently during that year, I was managing to see friends, I had found new things out about myself by going against my expectations, I was flying high at church...
There was a vague plan, a basic map of where my life was going and how I was going to manage it. I've already talked about not worrying about having a plan, but I've got to be honest, since September, I've felt the loss of the security increasingly, until now I basically feel swamped, overwhelmed, unable to cope.
I don't know how to juggle my calling, my work, my relationship, my family, my friends, doing the groceries, and the laundry, deciding what to wear in the mornings, applying for the next job, daily reading, prayer and reflection, developing my prayer life, doing my hair every other day, cooking, eating, washing up, times to get up, to leave, to arrive, transport issues, looking after my friends when they need me, which shoes cause blisters on which part of my foot, feeding my landlady's cat when she's away, keeping up with the news, TV, Youtube, Facebook, doing a diary entry every Sunday, finding somewhere to live after February, remembering to text my mother occasionally, learning my music for choral evensong, two of them in fact...
Yes, I'm no different to every bugger on planet earth. As my boyfriend said last night, it's called having a life. But the smog of my calling has destroyed the balance. My world is uncertain, and just getting on with things doesn't feel like enough any more. I feel like I'm teetering, off-balance and barely holding on, for the first time in my life.
I like doing things 'properly'. I feel most secure when I feel like I know what I'm doing. And God's curve ball has knocked the confidence out of me. There's no manual, no how-to guide, no 'proper' way to do this discernment process. Bloody London diocese doesn't even give you a basic idea of how it might go. From a deep down, irrational, emotional place inside me, I am extremely uncomfortable because if I don't know how to do it properly, how will I get it right? And if I keep going, and don't do it properly, that irrational feeling tells me I'm not going to be okay; I'll have messed it up and I can't start again, and this big important thing in my life that I've been on this comprehensive, step by step process towards will be a mess. It'll be all over the place, an organic, disorganised process, which means I might miss something.
When navigating, I have no sense of direction, and in general I forget things easily. Doing a process properly, with a clear understanding of how to do it, ideally written down, is how I manage. That's how I cope. God has stripped those options away from me for the thing that for years I have felt my life leading up to. If I'd had the 7 more years that I had expected I would get before following my calling to ordination, I might have felt prepared. But, like cantoring on a Sunday morning when I've only been told I am on the Saturday night, my inner knees are knocking, I'm in fight or flight mode, I'm terrified I'm going to fuck up, and I can't check out, I can't give up, I can't just not do it.
Without the safety net, it feels inevitable that I'll forget something, do something wrong, whatever it might be, and it'll irreparably fuck everything up. And then just like that, it's goodbye ordination, hello what the the fuck do I do with my life?
It's different to the prospect of being rejected for ordination itself. If I have gone through the process 'properly', done all I can to the best I can, then sure, I can accept that my calling wouldn't be to ordination. It's the prospect of a rejection based on an incomplete picture - if I miss something, or do it wrong, my petition will be a false representation; and missing out on what could be the way I should live my life, failing to achieve God's will for me, but only because I made a stupid mistake - that is a thought I cannot bear.
I know logically this is nonsense; I know my anxiety isn't based on anything rational, and the truth is life doesn't have a manual, and the discernment process is organic in nature. If it's God's will, it'll happen, whether I feel prepared or not. I should have faith and trust in God, and rely on God's strength.
I still feel overwhelmed.
I still don't understand why it's happening now.
I'm still worried I'm going to mess up.
Today is a bad day.
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