Waiting

In inner growth as in farming, waiting is necessary (Tarlac, 2016 on the way to Baguio City)

As my last day at work drew near, my bosses, colleagues, and friends would ask me what I was planning to do next.  I was asked so many times that I had come up with a standard answer:  "I'll sleep for a month and hopefully will dream of what I'd do next during my slumber."    

Yesterday marked my second month away from my last job.  I've not really had my koala days and haven't dreamt of what I'd be doing next.  I'm still able to get by with my redundancy pay and don't really miss having a full-time job except when some muggle-brained creatures ask me where I work and give me a sympathetic look when I tell them I'm not working and don't have a job waiting for me.  While there is no urgency in finding a full-time job now, a part of me is beginning to feel unsettled about the fact that I still don't have a clear sense of where the Spirit is leading me.  I was hoping that things would be clearer after leaving my job and with more time on my hands; but, my future is as hazy as it was two months ago.  

It's not as if I had been bumming around these last two months.  I had been preoccupied with my decluttering and house organisation exercise. I was busy organising flights and planning the itinerary of my sister and her two kids when they come for their vacation next week. I spent several days (and nights) working on my nanay's visa application to Canada. I had been swamped with domestic chores. I finally went to see friends I've not seen in ages. I started going to the gym. Even as I spend my weeklong "me time" here in my secret cottage, I try to be productive by campaigning for and raising awareness on my VP candidate in social media. 

I hadn't been wasting my time at all, but maybe that's what I should have done - spend time in what one author refers to as "sacred idleness" in order to clear my inner cobwebs and break down layers of emotional issues I had dumped as I had been too busy with my work to even listen to these inner stuff. As it is with being minimalist in my material possessions, decluttering and cleansing my inner landscape is important if I am to make sense of what truly matters deep inside. Obviously, I had been operating on the same external task orientation, this time with non-work related things. 

I hear the Spirit calling: wander, fear not the uncertainty, wait. The waiting drives me crazy, but then again, it's the same process as in the external task of decluttering.  I had been cleaning for weeks, but haven't really completed the whole task.  I felt like I had been cleaning forever with no tangible outputs, but actually there were little things happening - books, knick-knacks, accessories, and clothes disposed; more organised and breathing closets and drawers; documents easier to locate when needed.  Something is happening even if the big transformation I had been anticipating hasn't happened yet. Similarly, I want to trust that something has also started to happen in my inner discernment process even if I feel no palpable clarity at this point yet.  Wait and stay I will then.  And when impatience begin to set in, I'll remind myself of this message from a monk shared by Sue Monk Kidd in her book, When the Heart Waits:  

I hope you'll hear what I'm about to tell you. I hope you'll hear it all the way down to your toes.  When you're waiting, you're not doing nothing. You're allowing your soul to grow up.  If you can't be still and wait, you can't become what God created you to be.