The Doldrums

Strange how the clouds come in; swirling gently around hills, caressing the land as they descend into the valleys of green; before long they have smothered the entire verdant landscape.  A quiet lays heavily upon the fields, and all seems motionless.  So is my mind now—again, for it seems all too regular these days.  Almost as a drunken stupor veiling my cogency with its heavy influence, a quiet hush imprints itself upon my occasionally frenetic thoughts; momentum is lost in that haze, and all attempts at forging new thoughts, new paths, new articulations—fall flat and silent long before their time.

Is this what it is to be content?  Lost in the doldrums of ceaseless being?  Where is the doing?  The fear-induced striving has been slowly stripped from my heart.  My motivations unmasked and revealed as the hideous manifestations of insecurity and self-hatred.  But, for a time, it was a delightful party wasn’t it?  Perhaps it just seemed that way; perhaps it seems more that way now looking back, from here, in the doldrums of seeming nothingness.  I cannot deny how those masked fiends—once thought of as friends—mutilated my soul.  How they contorted my every desire and longing into a selfish ugly thing.  How they so blinded me to the ugliness of it all, to the point that I even believed some of it was beautiful and good, and—gasp!—righteous.

Even less can I deny the beauty of His love that unmasked those things; how it pervades my very being with ruthless and shocking mercy.  How tender the heart of love that pours itself upon my wounds—mostly self-inflicted—and heals like a salve; it is the only true panacea, the one thing that makes the term plausible.  Yet here I am in the doldrums.  How long oh Lord, how long?

My mind is a boat stranded on a shoreless ocean, not a wisp of wind to distend the sail.  Once I surged forward, cutting the waves to pieces with ease, shards of water left in my wake.  I knew my destination; I knew my purpose.  On the winds of insecurity I careened recklessly toward the shore of self-righteousness.  Some would say I wrecked upon that shore long ago.  Yet here I float aimlessly.  The destinations I once held sacred, I now see as folly.  I do not desire to reach my former lofty goals.  I do not wish to be great any longer.  Echoes of words gone by, shadows of my former heart and its destiny of greatness (at least in my mind) haunt me now, embarrass me, prod me, humble me.  Obscurity is such a blessing; that men would ignore me, pass my little sail boat on their yachts and ocean liners as they power toward the shore I once sought.  It brings perspective to my quivering soul; to be trampled upon by other’s ambition is not pleasant, yet somehow fitting, somehow healing.

How long oh Lord, must I wait?  Surely there is a new destination; point the way and I will go.  But that is problem isn’t it?  I long to strive again.  To feel I am accomplishing something.  Yet how can I embark upon any journey until I truly know I am loved?  How can any journey lead anywhere other than self-righteousness, if I do not truly understand your grace?  And I wonder if that is the journey, if it has always been the journey.  What great effort it takes to simply be.  It was far easier to strive in my strength, and that is the problem; for all my momentum was borne of my strength, my insecurity; to let go of that, is to be in the doldrums, at least for a time.

And so I will wait, and though you slay me I will trust you.

by ML