Friday, February 20, 2009

Since Spain

A strange, extraordinary, astonishing, miraculous thing has happened. I have been reunited with Will since Spain. How in the last week have I recovered what was lost, that striking vital enticing amorphous hopeful motivation? Have I? Or is it the ephemeral honeymoon effect of learning to love my London?

Where in Madrid, in those tangled, sunny streets so reminiscent of my normal, ordered chaos, did I find him? One encouraging glance from him and my batteries recharge. Disbelief disappears as thirst is assuaged in a luscious flood by the Living Water, not appeased as with a black umbrella. My frustration with my peers has been overcome by this Will, has been replaced by this Will’s will to simply, steadily keep racing them all despite my former insistence that the results won’t matter, that I am a washed-up has-been. I’ve come to a realization: I think I was wrong.

I think I was wrong. A few days in Madrid and a few fewer nights and I discovered the treasure is indeed hidden where X marks: the red and white X on blue—my treasure of comfort, always at home and nowhere else. So London has become home, or at least a home, and it was a relief to return. London has become a familiarity rote, not comforting, but a familiarity nevertheless.

I think I was wrong. I had finally, blessedly, become at ease with the idea that pressing and pushing in classes wasn’t worth squandering happiness and relationships. I convinced myself that what I did didn’t matter because God would take care of me in the end. I think I was wrong. Not in that God would not take care of me, but that that meant I didn’t have to try. Such is Paul’s argument in Romans: just because you are saved by grace and faith does not mean you forsake the Law. Similarly, just because God will take care of me doesn’t mean I should forsake my gifts. Doing so brings Him no glory.

Since Spain, Will has revealed to me motivation. Since two two-hour flights and the sun’s shine life as its better half is back on track. I’m with a sense of urgency to clutch and grasp and grapple with that momentum before it rolls off without me. I stand on the edge of an unknown, waiting, but not asleep—waiting, anticipating, as a runner does in the blocks. I’m leaning forward straining fighting gravity I’m tense my fingers stab the hard, biting white lines on red rubber I must get every advantage possible before the gun CRACKs!

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