son of man, turn your ear

Please forgive. But I’m going to get a little nerdy right now. Really nerdy.
A lot of the time here I feel like Bilbo. Like, exactly like Bilbo in the very beginning of The Hobbit. Not the part where dwarves are invading his house and singing about buried treasure. But when Bilbo is pretty much pushed out the door and forced to join in an adventure. He’s riding along on his little pony in the sunshine and thinking ‘Hey, adventures are pretty fun. I kind of like them.’ But then it starts to rain, and they go into a dark forest, and their food gets all wet and no one is warm. Then Bilbo is like, ‘Okay, adventures maybe aren’t as excellent as I thought. This is pretty hard and not fun at all.’

This adventure that I’m on is hard. Harder than I expected. Maybe one of the hardest things I’ve done. It’s like, I knew what I was getting into, but I didn’t take it seriously. Phrases like “being challenged’ or ‘going out of your comfort zone’ or being ‘forced to rely on God’ all sound like good things you want to have until you actually have them. And then you realize that they are actually challenging, or really uncomfortable, or seriously only having God to rely on.

I know this is an experience that I am going to remember for the rest of my life, and I know that I’ll be so glad I got through this. But now I’m just in the getting-through-it part. I just want to be on the other side of this already.

current song: The Transfiguration by Sufjan Stevens