Anxieties

You know you are getting comfortable when your Indian neighbor and roommate with rockstar hair decide to start a band together with a street purchased mini drum and guitar that needs tuning! 

Don't get me wrong, I'm having fun and making lots of memories! But sometimes I ask myself if I’m getting too comfortable.

“Most of our thoughts are centered on the money we want to make, the school we want to attend, the body we aspire to have, the spouse we want to marry, the kind of person we want to become… But the fact is that nothing should concern us more than our relationship with God; it’s about eternity, and nothing compares with that.” – Francis Chan, Crazy Love

You would think that being in India, having this experience, living in a much simpler way, would make me realize that my relationship with God is all that matters. But even here, I find myself being stressed out about how much exercise I am doing, if I’m going to be super slow at biking when I go home, whether or not I am really learning something from this experience, or actually helping anyone, and even what is going to be different about home when I return. I feel this strange anxiety when I think about home or picture myself in America. Part of me can see my life carrying on just as it was before I left and it being a simple transition because everything will be left just as I remember it. But the other part of me feels anxious about talking to people, about sharing anything about India, because how to do you explain it without it sounding so repetitive and the same as every other SM story? I’m anxious because I feel like I wont be bale to talk easily with anyone I was ever close to. Even right now, I get this feeling when I log into skype or facebook and someone I know is online… I want to talk to them because I miss them! But I can’t make myself do it, because what am I going to say? It’s strange and I feel like I can’t relate. Like I no longer have anything in common, but how can this be possible when I am the same person. Am I too comfortable here in this mindset to go back to what I thought was 'normal' life? 

But in the end, the anxieties don’t even matter. It’s not about the person I want to become or about the body I want to have or the trendy relationships I want to build. It’s about my relationship with God. He has some plan for my life and I believe my life will work out this way… It doesn’t matter if I’m not as fit as I want to be or that I don’t exactly have as many close relationships with people as I wish I did, because in the end these things don’t matter at all! There’s a time for each of these things and I have my whole life ahead of me to master those. But I don’t have my whole life to begin working hard at my God relationship. That has to happen now…in every part of every day…

Every morning, I sit down with some tea, read some spiritual motivation, write in my journal, promise myself that I will include God in my daily activities, and then move on with my day. Why can't I seem to remember him in the other parts of my day? It's a good question, and I think the answer is hiding right underneath all my anxieties. I remember that my life is already planned, why worry? I simply need to let go.