Expectations

I’m running again. Classic.

But today I’m running to breathe.

My throat is tight. My shoulders are tense. My breath is short. My stride is choppy.

I had to get outside. The walls at work and on the boat felt confining and claustrophobic. 

It’s the end of the summer flying season and people are moving on to bigger and better jobs, faster jets, and higher pay. Friends are getting married, settling down, having children, and buying homes. 

Yet, here I am. Drifting. Floating. I live on a boat with my cat and I fly a single engine plane. I feel behind, like I should be doing more or have accomplished more. 

There are no other options on this island. I’m lucky to even have a job that flies through the winter. To change those things, to get a better paying job and afford a solid home, to fly a faster, bigger plane, means I’d have to leave this place. Or find a yacht daddy. 

The second option is fairly unlikely here too. 

The idea of leaving this forest with its mountains and the ocean and moving back to a city makes my heart race. I feel nauseous. 

I need the forest. The wild.

Through the hazy delirium of my spiraling thoughts, the sweet dirt smell of the forest is a calming drug. My awareness opens back up and I start to come out of myself.

I look at the old growth of trees around me. Far older than me, they are deeply rooted, sturdy. They are doing exactly what they were created to do. Their branches shade my path protecting me from the sun, wind, and rain. Even in death, the nurse trees feed the new growth around them, making homes for all the creatures and plants of the forest. 

What was I created to do? 

Honestly, I’m not sure. I keep wishing that the Lord would yell down from the heavens with an explicit set of instructions. But that hasn’t happened yet. He’s given me the commandment to love and left the rest up to me. My free will. 

The sun shines through the alder leaves like the stained glass windows of a cathedral. Here in this place, in the beauty of God’s creation, the veil between heaven and earth is thin. The noise of the world fades away and I feel grounded again. 

As I run through this raw and wild church, the branches of the different trees and bushes wave at me. I see all the different plants with their distinct natures. They each have their purpose. The ferns, mushrooms, trees, and bushes, are all so different in the function of this ecosystem. It’s impossible to compare the life of a Fiddlehead Fern and a Yellow Cedar—or even the Yellow Cedar and the Alder. 

“Every flower has its own created beauty. The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent, nor the daisy of its simple charm. If every flower wanted to be a rose, nature would lose her spring adornments and the fields would not be beautiful with their varied flowers…so it is in the world of souls the living garden of God.” – St. Terese of Liseux

Am I really drifting? Floating? Or am I comparing myself to others? Or to some expectation I’ve created for myself?

I love what I do here as a pilot. I have the privilege of serving remote communities and bringing them food and mail. I get to fly through mountain canyons and fjords with magnificent waterfalls few people in the world will ever see. I have witnessed whales breach and bubble feed and pods of orcas race along the shore line. I’ve seen massive rafts of hundreds of sea otters holding hands and floating in a bay. 

I own my home, a sailboat. I live in a cove with my friends. I’ve sailed my boat in the sunset alongside a pod of humpback whales. I’ve learned systems and how to fix them. I’ve become my own handywoman. 

Yet still the fear of doing and being enough creeps in. 

Why?

”Comparison is the thief of joy.”  – Theodore Roosevelt 

Simple and poignantly true, comparison is the thief of joy. Not because comparison is a dark thief in the night that steals from us. Or because reflecting on our progress is a bad thing. But because comparison leads to the expectation that we should be somewhere, be somebody that we aren’t today. Because comparison leads to distrust in God’s plan. 

Our God is a God who is on time. He is not late or early, but right on time. He brings us what we need exactly when we need it. 

The question of what we need often becomes tangled with what we want. The pinnacle of what we need, in an eternal perspective, is union with Christ, salvation. God gives us exactly what we need, when we need it, to lead us to His most Sacred Heart. That’s it. 

Aside from anyone else in this world. Am I doing what I ought and loving what I do? Do I trust that the Lord will nudge me in the right direction and place people in my life at the right time? 

Do I trust that if I am doing what I ought, praying and staying close to Him, that He will tell me when it is time to move next?

If I trust Him, then I have nothing to worry about. 

My stride, my shoulders, and my breath all relax. 

I can breathe again. 

Jesus, I trust in you.