My own Nirvana
“But, What if I fall? Oh but darling; What if you fly?”
This year, 2017, is marked by the constant reminder to live outside of my comfort zone. There is a quiet urgency inside of me that keeps whispering: “You can never reach new horizons if you near leave the shore”…and I feel compelled to take a gamble even though my hands shake if I throw away a dollar in a slot machine. I’m not talking about putting it all on Red #9 and spinning the wheel. I’m talking about taking a walk outside of my comfort bubble.
In my prayers I timidly ask God for guidance and wisdom wondering if the wisdom I am to gain will come from the road of hard knocks. Then, when an opportunity comes up, I’m generally too freaked out to take the kind of risk that produces big reward.
So, I stand on this edge wondering if now is the time to take the leap while recognizing the irony in my own contemplation. Years ago, taking a leap might have meant from a window in order to end my suffering. Today the leap is away from the safe space around me that I created to keep from landing myself in a box under a bridge cooking ramen over a fire of discarded furniture.
I have managed to spend the better part of the last 30 years carefully balancing payday with the bills in my mailbox. Splurging occasionally but never letting finances get too far in the red and never quite reaching that financial nirvana either.
I find myself questioning whether all this stuff and its accompanying bills could possibly be worth it. I often find myself staring into some pointless object that I have decorated my house with and find myself wondering what in the world the point is to any of this stuff. My husband doesn’t get it. He loves our house and wants to live here forever but I have a deep need to rid myself of all this worldly drivel and the chains they wrap around me. I want to be free but ironically the freedom I find myself wanting is the freedom to just sit in a corner of the couch and not worry about how clean the house is or if the lawn is mowed or the groceries are purchased or any of the other mundane chores of life are done.
The older I get the more simplified my dream becomes. All I need is a place to store the stuff that I actually DO need, a place to lay down at night, and a place to sit during the day. I do not need 5 acres, nor do I need a 3-bedroom house filled with beautiful but pointless stuff.
I am ready to throw caution to the wind and let go of everything and hunker down in a simple life. Maybe my desire for less will wear off tomorrow. Maybe I will put my shoes on and go about my day as usual; being content to know that Jesus Loves me and all these swirling thoughts in my head will simmer down and shut up.