Raging, baking, and praying
Growth is messy and confusing, what else is there to say?
My mother likes to call it reenacting the Book of Job. Granted, our bubble of NYC privilege shields us from some of the horrors that Job experienced; plus, I highly doubt she sees pain as a result of a personal test from God himself. Still, it acknowledges that we experience tests. God knew Job was deeply devoted to him and decided to test his loyalty to see if it was true devotion, not just luck. Job lost everything, even his children, yet remained devoted to God. In conclusion, we should also maintain that loyalty; anything less means we are very bad. Jokes aside, there is a lesson of faith in all of this, a faith not necessarily meaning a Judeo-Christian deity. Yet, without faith, there’s no hope.
This past year, I’ve experienced a lot of stagnation and loss. I found myself frustrated artistically, professionally, and personally. It was a season of trial and error, finding the right balance of mentors, colleagues, and loved ones. But a pattern I’ve always experienced and will back forever is that what might appear to be a plateau isn’t really a plateau. But then, what is it? I think of it as a marinade or a baking period. It's like a recipe that takes 2.5 hours, but one hour is spent marinating, and 45 mins is spent baking. You might be sitting around waiting to move on to the next part of the recipe, but that doesn’t mean the dish isn't being made. We are willing to wait for food to marinate and bake, but if we experience that passivity ourselves, we lose our minds to melancholy (ok, this is a self-read; I’m the one that loses my mind to melancholy.)
It all comes down to trust. We trust a recipe. But we don’t trust ourselves. When we are in a rut, it feels permanent. Sure, many of us can tell ourselves, “This too shall pass,” but saying it or thinking it doesn’t do the trick. You need to believe it. When I think of my growth journey, it's never linear. It's filled with awkward growth spurts swimming in clumsiness, confusion, and sometimes a dash of rage. Sometimes, I feel hopeless, but something always brings me back. Trust (and my never-ending ability to find humor in the darkest spaces.) But it was mostly trust. And when I couldn’t trust myself, I was grateful enough to trust the important people around me.
That said, things are feeling different lately. I’m finding myself reflecting on all of these painful moments rather than feeling like I’m in the middle of a storm. Nothing has changed on paper, but sometimes you can feel it in your very being. My only regret is wishing that I trusted the process just a little bit more. I wouldn’t say the dish is out of the oven, but I’m certainly starting to smell the aromas.