Between What Has Been and What Will Be

I’ve noticed that like so many other people, I have trouble living in the present. I spend a lot of time just thinking, even when I’m doing something else, and in my mind I’m usually either reliving something in the past, or I’m planning (and/or worrying) about the future–thinking about what I have to get done, or whatever. I have to discipline myself to live in the moment, and often my self-discipline is lacking.

My family often notices this dynamic about me, where I’m there, but not really there. I’ll tune out whole conversations before I even realize it, and when I come back to reality, I’ll ask a question that was answered several minutes before (only I wasn’t listening because I was problem-solving in my head). Sometimes it amuses my family, sometimes it annoys them. I’m better at it than I used to be, but there are still seasons where I retreat deep inside my head, and when I’m in that place, I’m usually somewhere in the past or the future–not in the present.

I don’t know why this is for everyone, but I think for me, I have trouble living in the present when I’m not content with it. There’s usually some aspect of my present life that I wish was different, and my response is to go back into the past to see what led me to the present (which basically only leads to regret), or to dream of a future time when that negative aspect will have magically changed. Perhaps this is natural for most of us, but neither response is actually helpful.

I also think I’m prone to this more in this “in between” season I’m in, where I am very aware of where I have come from, less certain about where I’m going, and having to live in between those two places where it seems nothing is really sound. I know what I did not like about institutional Christianity, but I have no clear answers of what it looks like to live my faith differently. I had to say goodbye to old forms of community, and I don’t know what “new” community will look like just yet–and it gets pretty lonesome in the meantime. I came out of a place where my music career had a clear shape and form (in the context of the church), and I don’t know what that career is going to look like in this new context–and I frequently feel like I’m racing the clock in that aspect. So when I can’t find enough to latch onto in the present tense, I guess it’s sort of easy to avoid it by jumping backward or forward. But neither really does much to move my present into the future.

But here’s the thing: in a way, we ALL live in the “in between.” We can’t change the past, and we can’t know the future. All we really have is what happens in between. We can certainly learn from the past, and we should definitely try to plan for the future–but not at the expense of living in the moment. (I’m kinda talking to myself here–can you tell?)

When my family first moved here, even though it was a really scary time in some ways, I think I was better at living in the moment then than I am now. For one thing, everything was new and fresh; my whole life had changed fairly quickly, and my lifestyle with it, and it was easier, I suppose, to embrace my surroundings and take it all in. I still spent plenty of time alone in my head trying to work things out, but I could at least come up for air now and then–even if it was thinner air than I used to breathe. 🙂

But I’ve noticed about myself lately that those moments of embracing the present tense are fewer and further between. Some of it, I guess, is that I’m a lot busier with work, and time management is an issue I must stay on top of; some of it is just that I fall into a mindless routine over time. But life is not in the past or the future; it is in the here and now. I don’t want to miss what happens in between.

This morning, I found myself discontent with where I’m at, and I could almost step outside myself and see how I looked to the past, then jumped to the future in my mind, to try to escape that discontent. Sometimes I mourn the past, not because I want to go through some of those things again, but because sometimes I almost wish I could live in blissful ignorance again–even though I was really enslaved by that ignorance. And now that I’m out of the slavery of blissful ignorance, I worry that I’ll never find my way out of the wilderness into whatever I perceive my “promised land” to be.

But the fact is, every day there is something worth embracing and enjoying, that I’m missing while I’m busy grieving the past and fearing the future. While not everything is how I want it to be, a lot of stuff is much better than it used to be. I want to have the literal presence of mind to celebrate those victories, to find happiness in the moment, rather than have the moment pass me by.

There are a lot of questions that still remain unanswered about this “transition” season I’m in–but the fact is, we ALL live between what has been and what will be. I need to remind myself to LIVE in this place and time–because it’s all I have been given, and indeed all that any of us are given.

We can’t change the past. We can’t know the future. All we really have is what happens in between.

And whatever happens in this place–I don’t want to miss it.