paris & patience

i started julia child's "my life in france" today. i wasn't even through the introduction before i got carried away to paris in my mind. 


paris is such a fantastic city, and every time i think of it i want to go back. for as much as i want to move home to pittsburgh one day, i would not turn down a chance to live in france for a few years...


outside of my nostalgia, the beginning of the book also made me realize that i lack patience. i think my life needs to be on a set course now. that i must be wasting my life away somehow if i don't know for sure what comes next. but look at julia child. she was 34 when she got married and 36 when she arrived in france. at that point she didn't know how to cook much of anything, and yet the name julia child is synonymous with cooking.


i have this obsession with wanting to know what's coming, with being in control [which is really just a farce anyway]. i want to know what is going to happen, and yet there have been many times when people didn't discover the gift that defined them until later in life.


i'm quite sure that had you told a 34 year old julia child, or a 44 year old paul child [paul was ten years older than julia...] that julia would become a world-famous cook they both would have laughed in your face. and yet, that's what happened.

julia and paul child
{via www.vanityfair.com}

the thing is, we don't know. we can't know. 


no matter what happens it will never be what you expected, even in those rare circumstances where life goes just as you planned. even then it never turns out quite how you thought it would. 


i tend to get into ruts where i think i've somehow ruined everything by failing to do something. but at the end of the day, i either believe that God has the whole world in his hand, or i don't. i either believe that God can use my mistakes, failures, misgivings, and faults, and still make it okay. or i don't.


maybe one day, when i'm forty i'll be something i never expected. because who knows? the bottom line is: i don't have it all figured out. 


i think it's high time i started enjoying that a little bit more...
the not knowing.
the grace.
the love.
the rest.

and i rest in the shelter of your love

and i rest in the wonder of your grace

and i rest in the shelter of your love

and i rest in the wonder of you.

-switchfoot's "rest"