A place the soul once knew

I had crazy dreams last night. The unsettling kind that make no sense. We were living in someone else's house (which I knew), I couldn't remember my morning routine, couldn't find my car and we had a barn full of random vehicles, I forgot to feed the dog - even though I knew our dog had died but yet somehow there he was in the fenced-in backyard of a house we used to live in that was now next door... It was one of those dreams. When I woke up I wasn't sure of anything.

This came on the heels of a Sunday evening anxiety like I haven't experienced since my school days. I suppose I'm nervous about coming changes at my work. I don't like change. I don't want it to happen.

Honestly, I am afraid. I am afraid I won't be able to deal with the changes - regardless of what they are. And, of course I know change is inevitable... it doesn't make it any easier though. Especially the older I get. Oof.

Anyway, I started reading Mark Yaconelli's 'Between the Listening and the Telling' this morning. Oh my. It was ironically timely. Here's a bit from the very first page...

There are moments, often unexpected, when you find yourself at home in your own life. Simple, gentle, ordinary moments. Standing at the kitchen window. Rain outside. The earth springing into green and yellow. The birds, the ridiculous birds, singing without worry beneath the gray sky. For some reason, without effort, the anxiety lifts, your chest relaxes, your senses awaken, a quiet descends, and you are home.

It is in moments like this when I can feel how distant I have been from the life I long to live. I have been homesick and didn't know it. I have been living miles away from my deepest yearnings and not known it. I have been hurrying through my days isolated, fragmented, caught within the jet stream of the anxious world. Only now in the waking stupor do I feel the alienation and loss and, like a sobering drunk, ask "How long was I out?"

How long, indeed.

I don't know what I will do or what will happen. What I do know is... I'm ready to go home now.

*Btw, "a place the soul once knew" was the title of the chapter I read today. I really like that.

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Psalm 64: 6b-7

"Yes, the human heart and mind are cunning. 

But God himself will shoot them with his arrows,
    suddenly striking them down."