This is probably the fifth blog I’ve started since I last posted…the rest are still sitting in my drafts – a bunch of ideas conceived but not yet birthed.

The reality is that I recently found myself in a place someone told me I’d be in about four years ago. At the time I remember the feedback/advice/perspective stinging a little, but my positivity and peace making characteristics kicked in and I suppressed that idea down to an off the cuff statement rather than wise intuition.

“Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.”

Henry Cloud

I have never really felt stuck before, but it wasn’t until recently that I was ready to move forward but felt for reasons outside of myself I couldn’t.

Divorce is shit. It’s rarely easy, straightforward, or nice, and no one’s hands are ever fully clean. That’s not an admission of guilt, but the realisation that whenever relationship’s break down, we all have something to own. I’ve mentioned this before in previous posts I’m sure; but I’m thankful for two good mentors and transformative counseling which helped guide me for the first two years after my separation. During that period I focused on me – on correcting some things, healing some things, forgiving some things, on trying to be a good dad, on serving the community I loved as best I could, and on ‘trusting the process’. But at some point you have to move again, not just for your own sake, but also for the sake of the ones you love. Once the divorce was offical I felt it was my time, so I started to think future again, to dream again, and imagine what could be.

Those who don’t share the journey don’t value the progress.

So I found myself starting to push ahead, and found others holding me back. Each time I stepped forward, those who had not journeyed with me created waves that rocked the boat, creating uncertainty. That uncertainty effected everyone else in the boat, it made others weary.

Truth is, time becomes everyone’s friend when it’s on their side. There is much that could be said about why intentional community matters, and why spacial community doesn’t work. People who don’t journey with you perceive you to be where they last encountered you, either their last memory or lasting impression, good or bad, its the jail cell or platform they hold you to.

So there I was. Stuck between what was and what is. Stuck between what people say about you and who you actually are. Stuck between old and new. Between the mistakes you made and the change you embraced. Stuck between creation and re-creation. Stuck between what seems like yesterday while simultaneously feeling like your living in tomorrow. Stuck.

The reality for me is that my journey meant that I became less idealistic about how things were meant to be; where once I saw black and white I now see so much grey. Once life seemed straight forward, now I know it’s no where close to straight forward. Even more than that, it’s been helpful to learn that a straight forward life is a concept which appears far from an Hebraic understanding. In a number of ways failure is not in the mistakes, it’s in the refusal to learn from them.

When it comes to faith, family, work, and friends, I cling to the things I believe are the essentials, to the things that matter the most. It’s become less about being right, less fear about being wrong, and more confidence about being real.

Mele is my ambassador of quan. She fights for me because she knows me more than any other human on the planet, well before we ‘announced’ to the world we were in a relationship we journeyed together in private a path of honesty and vulnerability that was at times humbling and brutal, but now I know she sees me, and because she sees me and knows me, she demands that I don’t simply sit in my ‘stuckness’. No one else has done that for me like she has. And perhaps if it wasn’t for her I’d still be unknowingly stuck.

Others have witnessed me being stuck, others have empathised for me, but no one has got lovingly angry at me, and at others, for allowing myself to stay in it.

The riddle and insight of biblical faith is the awareness that only anguish leads to life, only grieving leads to joy, and only embraced endings permit new beginnings.

Walter Bruggeman

So I find myself in the place I was told I’d be in four years ago. That the time would come where I would be ready to move forward but some people wouldn’t know how to accept that. Familiarity by proximity rather than relationship tends to do that. So in order to not stay stuck I would need to ‘move away’, I would need to end some things.

Ending my job nearly a year ago now, and with it a number of dreams, then moving on from my community has been harder than imagined, and I imagined it was going to be hard! It has felt so isolating and lonely at times, but I know that no grief comes without its tears. And so now the tears have been shed, the sorrow expressed, I sit in a place where my tomorrow is still uncertain in many ways. But like emerging from a dark tunnel, where the light before you is so bright it hides what is beyond it, I find comfort in both the light itself and the understanding that seeing beyond the light is unnecessary.

I don’t feel ‘free’, but I don’t feel stuck. I still feel lonely at times, but I don’t feel alone. I feel like I’m living in the present.

What matters is one’s orientation towards the light. Trajectory and posture are more important than externally perceived proximity.

Focus on that and I believe the rest will take care of itself.

“You’ve gone into my future to prepare the way, and in kindness you follow behind me to spare me from the harm of my past.”

Psalms 139:5 TPT