Non-fiction / All dripping in tangles green

Last year, around this time, I wrote about turning twenty. I made mention of my twentieth year being a rollercoaster, an adventure, a heartbreak. It’s amazing how accurate that piece was.

I remember writing the piece quite vividly. As I sat there re-reading what I had written, I thought to myself, “heartache”? Why in the world would I write something like that? I have no desire for heartache. And yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that life was about to get seriously hard. So I left it in.

In writing this bit, I’m trying to condense everything I’ve learned in this year into a short piece.

I’m reading Herman Melville (in particular, “Moby-Dick,” for a class). He addresses our relationship to God in a poem entitled, “The Tuft of Kelp”

             All dripping in tangles green,
                Cast up by a lonely sea,
             If purer for that, O Weed,
                Bitter, too, are ye?

I sit here, pondering this poem with fascination. Melville is addressing a problem that I have often struggled with this past year. Reconciling a loving God to a seemingly unloving demand and the bitterness it can leave in the wake. “Here is that which you love before you and here am I also. Which will you keep and which will you let go?”

I would almost agree with Melville’s idea (being true to God often feels like being false to oneself) -at times, I wholeheartedly agree. There is a small truth in Melville’s poem. God does ask us to give up the life we want to live the life He wants. Where Melville errs is in believing that being true to God is to be untrue to ourselves. In fact, we were created to glorify Him. Would not living our lives in submission be the utmost glorification?

I have been living this past year with this one question. Interesting how it comes into a college course at this moment in my life when the turmoil within me is coming to its apex. At every turn, I am faced with the same choice. I cannot escape it. It is ever in my thoughts and in my dreams. Everyday I am asked and, everyday, I must answer. I sometimes wonder why I must decide everyday. Why can’t I decide once and be done with it? The answer is simple. The battle over the heart is a battle to be fought everyday. It is not a matter of torture, but of fact. The fact that the battle is torture is proof that it is not won.

One of my favorite authors once wrote, “God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” He also writes, “We’re not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”

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