sitting on my hands

I am so incredibly impatient--and I have asked God to teach me patience.
So I am trying to sit on my hands.
far easier said that done.

I've quit my job: some because I don't like it; some because I'm exhausted; mostly because God asked me to. because I am NOT a quitter. damn it, I'm not! I will stick things out until I like them, even if I never really do. That's how much of a non-quitter I am. But I am a square peg being shoved into a round hole. I could stay, but I've experienced this once before quite strongly and while I loved that place and its people more than life itself-still do, it made me weep. still does.

Sometimes we are asked to give up our dreams so that God can give them back to us in better form than we imagined.

But right now I just feel like throwing a fit.

I sat on the boardwalk on Staten Island, mesmerized by the tiny lights of vehicles creeping along the Verrazano Bridge and the glow of the city, waves crashing and wind blowing. A teenager on the bench next to me bickering with her mother on the phone. If you really loved me then you'd give me what I want. I've never asked you for anything. Just give me this one thing. A sense of entitlement. I see it every day in my children. I hear the same arguments, the same exact words. Uncanny.

How many times have I had that same argument with God?

And then He gives me my way--as if to say here, you try it. Tell me how it goes. So I go to work. I look at the possibilites. I search. I dream. I plan. I am like a child on the floor, amongst a giant puzzle, trying to put the pieces together but the pieces are too heavy for me to lift. No amount of planning and scheming can give me the strength to move them. I have to wait for them to move. And then when they move I become frustrated because they don't move in the order I want! As if I had any control over them in the first place.

If I had not planned, I would not have been frustrated. I would have rejoiced in their movement, fascinated by how they came together with divine timing.

So I am trying to sit on my hands. I am trying desperately not to plan. That's a huge reason why I try to fill my life to the brim, so I can't plan. Now I am learning how not to plan in the silence. When every bone in my body says, you must remain on top of things. The voice of my mother echoing in my head. You should've been prepared. You should've left more time. You should've thought of that. So I plan. I prepare. And I'm still frustrated. BECAUSE I CAN'T MAKE THE PIECES MOVE!

I can't make my home in a place where my gifts aren't used.
I can't work in a place where I am taken advantage of.
I can't live with someone who doesn't understand me.

But I want my home back. I want a place where I feel safe and capable, a community to love and be loved. I want to work to my full capacity, to make the most of every opportunity, to be everything that I can be. And I want to live with someone in companionship and love for life.

My attempts have failed. So God sent me to Newark New Jersey. The only thing that really makes sense so far is the thing He has sent me out here to do--work with urban youth. And all my plans to make the other pieces fall into place have been frustrated. Far sooner because I listen at least a little bit better than before.

So I sit in the middle of the puzzle pieces of my life--waiting. waiting for the pieces to move and desperately trying to just be. to stop checking the job sites. to stop thinking about the future. and just reside in the present. but it's hard.

God teach me patience.