Dragons and Indie Films

I wish I could write that I had an incredible moment of clarity and integrity and responded with great courage and social media worthy hashtags during this past season of transition. I never saw a flashing light, fell into a mirky dream, or experienced a vertigo-inducing dramatic conversation where the world stopped and blurred like an indie film your friend suggests. You know those almost interesting films that leave you with more questions than answers as the credits run up the screen to ambient music rattling the inner chambers of your being? Yeah, that was not my experience.

However, I do remember a vague but cyclical feeling of the inner chambers of my soul being rattled, panged, and poked by unexpected moments of pain and clarity.

A song on my car's radio on the drive home made me wonder if there was more to my living and eventually dying, pang. A comment from my graduate student in a paper probably written an hour before it was uploaded about the powerlessness one feels inside the machine of systematic education, poke. A genuine hug from one of my children reminding my skin that it is my temporary temple, rattle. A sad morning bettered by a really delicious cup of coffee on my back porch, cue the ambient music and long stares into the abyss.

I recently read the beginning of Madeline L'Engle's book, A Wind in the Door, I have not finished it, but I cannot rid myself of an image early in the book where Charles Wallace and Meg look out beyond a field at a breathing darkness. I imagine them stepping out into a field behind their home, much like the cow pasture behind my house, and seeing the huge black dragon-like create that has come to teach them. I love dragons, so my heart begged my eyes to move quickly through the text, and what I read has held me during the past four months. As the children looked more closely, they began to see the single enormous creature was actually a multitude of smaller creatures collectively existing but appearing as one single beast.

I have come to believe that we all must come face-to-face with the metaphorical dragons living in the fields out behind our homes. Darknesses breathing and watching. We have a choice to share real estate with them or take them on by looking into them and eventually through them.

I decided to listen to the accumulation of noise rattling in my heart. I changed course. By God's grace and kindness, I had the opportunity to cultivate a life of teaching instead of develop a career in education. I chose to leave one position for an entirely differently one. I am afraid and curious. I am concerned. I am excited.

I have since realized that what looked like my one single dragon, my career, was actually a large beast composed of many little beasts-my identity, self-worth, future, sense of belonging, and many things only counseling will be able to help me figure out. For me, after I made the career change, I came to see the rattling was a call for me to engage in seeing the world differently. A call to lead from my spirit and teach from my heart and mind, not within it. The focus is not our experiences of a single moment in a process, the focus is who I we are becoming and how we are living out what God is creating in the present.

I am learning courage is required to take that first step toward the darkness, to face the dragon, to delineate the darkness.

All too often, we expect our lives and leadership to play out like a well-crafted script, cue the opening shot and zoom in on me, only me.

While a linear life is so much easier to manage and manipulate, I want to encourage us to think about how we are listening to the callings resounding in the inner chambers of our hearts, bodies, minds, and spirits. The places we can either live within or from. The rattles, pangs, and pokes are inviting us to question the dragon living out in the field just behind our homes. A call to look into them and, by looking into them, see through them.

Your credits aren't rolling just yet.

Check out the book, it's series, and author Madeline L'Engle mentioned in the post by clicking here.