The Now and the Not Yet

My Pastor uses this term, "the now and the not yet", to describe the tension we feel in this life. We have been promised heaven, and some kind of peaceful future with God, but in the meantime we must live out life here on earth, in all of its wonder and brokenness.

I've been feeling off-kilter for the last few days and in trying to pinpoint why, I kept thinking of that phrase "the now and the not yet." When I was younger I wanted everything now, or even faster than now, if such a thing was possible. Waiting wasn't an option I was even vaguely interested in. I've worked through that in my late twenties and early thirties to discover the immense value in delayed gratification. Sometimes it means so much more to long for something, and then to experience it happening.

I've seen that with this dream to write. I've felt the growing pains, and the excitement for the "not yet" part of this dream to unfold. But I still hate waiting. The first agent has had my query letter for my screenplay for almost two weeks. The agency said they respond in 2-3 weeks, so it could be any day now. I'm trying not to be too attached to the results; to have my next agency ready to e-mail when I've heard from this one. I want to keep the process moving, but I failed to understand the emotional component attached to the waiting.

Our emotions chip away at us over a period of time, eroding our confidence like the waves alter the shape of the sand. I realize that I'm not good at managing change, never have been, and probably never will be. For all of my excitement to start this new phase of writing as my sole career, I'm still at my job and therefore struggle with the concept of "the now and the not yet." Ava is finishing an amazing year of Grade One, but it's not onto the new adventure until she's finished this one, so we are still walking out "the now and the not yet."

Perhaps I become impatient when I'm at the end of something, and just want to push on to the next phase. It is important to finish well, and to have no regrets, or at least as few as you can manage. I think I have to accept that my emotions have an agenda of their own, but I don't have to be enslaved by them. I can sit down, figure out why I'm feeling down, and understand the cause so I can make adjustments to my attitude. I'm hoping that this blog post will do that for me.

We all live in the now and the not yet. We are always beginning something, in the middle of something, or finishing up. All of the threads are never neatly tied up, and that's part of the human experience. I find it hard to accept that, but for as long as I'm alive, and in this world, I will have to find a way to come to terms with the ongoing nature of chaos and change.