The World Between Worlds
I've been thinking about a scene in C.S. Lewis' book, The Magician's Nephew, where the two main characters, kids, have meddled with their uncle's experimental rings. They put them on their fingers and were taken out of this world into another world, a sleepy place, flat and nondescript but for pools littered across the landscape. The rings had taken them out of this world and into that place by way of one of the pools. Every pool connects to a different world and the book is about their adventures exploring the different pools and then trying to get safely back into their own world through its pool. The nondescript, pool-filled landscape was called the world between worlds, a place where nobody can live for long because it gives no life. Life is in the pools.
Although we do not change planets as did the book's characters when jumping from one pool into another, in real life we too change worlds on occasion. What is will not always be. I am in that spot right now. I spent the summer of 2019 in Saipan, and now back in Davenport I have the feeling of being in a world between worlds. Granted, it could be jet lag. I slept 15 hours Thursday night and missed a lunch date with a friend Friday noon because I hadn't set an alarm. I didn't expect to sleep that long. I mean, who sleeps 15 hours?
[Which reminds me. I promised you a picture of the flowers I planted before I left. They are blooming.The flowers are pretty and the Monarch butterflies love them.]
But I don't think it is jet lag. I feel something like I did in the days following Larry's death. I felt it in Saipan. I feel it here. I am between two worlds, the world that was and the world that will be. Just like in the book, the world between worlds is a place of lethargy emotionally, physically, and spiritually, a place absent of movement, a place of waiting. That's where I am right now, sitting somewhere in space between Davenport and Saipan. Between what was and what comes next.
Life is like that. We live in segments. For some of us, life consists of long term, uniformly beaded segments of time. For others, life's beads are irregular and unpredictable. For all of us, life moves between the beads of time. Change is inevitable. What "is" moves irresistibly toward what "will be", like it or not.
I am in the process of shifting from one bead to the next. Shifts are hard. How do I do this next one? My mind today is on how I weathered the untimely death of my husband, the most cataclysmic shift of my life so far. The thing that made me able to make the shift, without getting caught forever in the lethargy of the world between worlds during that time, was people. God put certain people in my path to jog me into action when I was all too tempted to just give up and sleep beside a pool. Just drift for the rest of my life. The man God used to touch my life in that critical hour was a man whose name I never learned. I wish I had. I encountered him at the cemetery a week or so after the funeral. Here is what I wrote on that day:
"I went out to the grave today.
I was sad as I trudged through section 5 looking for #598. Reduced to a number seemed as wrong as my foot tracks marring the snow as I looped the aisles. My search was leading me toward some workers near the west edge. I bent my chin against the bitter wind and moved closer when one of the workers caught sight of me and moved toward me. He asked what number I was looking for. "Five, five ninety eight," I said. His coworker overheard and from the cab of the big machine he was working called to know what name. "Larry Trosen," I said.
He pointed to a grave five feet away. "He's right there, ma'am."
I felt better. Not a number, he's right there. I snapped a photo, turned and walked a direct route back to my car, wind forgotten, and without a thought about what my feet were doing to the snow. I pray God will bless the worker to whom a grave is more than a numbered pixel on a map. Bless him for knowing the grave has a name."
That unnamed worker started me on the course that led to where I am today, considering a permanent move to Saipan. The worker's words jogged me out of my lethargy. Until that moment I had been thinking my only option was to go live with one of my children, something that would have made me a dependent forever. His words gave me the courage to jump into an unknown pool.
I am about to jump again. Key people in my life this past year have prepared me for the next segment in my life. I will keep you posted as I go along. For now, though, I just want to encourage you to know that God uses people to take us from what is to what will be, to the extent that we are willing to touch and be touched by others. We are not designed to live in isolation. Thank you all for praying for me this summer. The journey continues. Hurdles abound. Jesus is Lord. Next time, I will try to explain the method the Nazarene Church uses to place missionaries and where I am in that process, along with what I see as my options. As you pray for me, pray knowing I am in the world between worlds. The lethargy is real. The temptation to just give up and "be normal" is real. At the same time, the desire to jump into the next pool is equally real and getting stronger. I've lived an irregular life. It appears that pattern will continue for the next while... if I have the courage to keep moving forward.
To be open, vulnerable, genuine, movable, and willing to touch and be touched by people in my world is my desire. You too? The journey certainly continues!
Much love,
Amy
Although we do not change planets as did the book's characters when jumping from one pool into another, in real life we too change worlds on occasion. What is will not always be. I am in that spot right now. I spent the summer of 2019 in Saipan, and now back in Davenport I have the feeling of being in a world between worlds. Granted, it could be jet lag. I slept 15 hours Thursday night and missed a lunch date with a friend Friday noon because I hadn't set an alarm. I didn't expect to sleep that long. I mean, who sleeps 15 hours?
[Which reminds me. I promised you a picture of the flowers I planted before I left. They are blooming.The flowers are pretty and the Monarch butterflies love them.] But I don't think it is jet lag. I feel something like I did in the days following Larry's death. I felt it in Saipan. I feel it here. I am between two worlds, the world that was and the world that will be. Just like in the book, the world between worlds is a place of lethargy emotionally, physically, and spiritually, a place absent of movement, a place of waiting. That's where I am right now, sitting somewhere in space between Davenport and Saipan. Between what was and what comes next.
Life is like that. We live in segments. For some of us, life consists of long term, uniformly beaded segments of time. For others, life's beads are irregular and unpredictable. For all of us, life moves between the beads of time. Change is inevitable. What "is" moves irresistibly toward what "will be", like it or not.
I am in the process of shifting from one bead to the next. Shifts are hard. How do I do this next one? My mind today is on how I weathered the untimely death of my husband, the most cataclysmic shift of my life so far. The thing that made me able to make the shift, without getting caught forever in the lethargy of the world between worlds during that time, was people. God put certain people in my path to jog me into action when I was all too tempted to just give up and sleep beside a pool. Just drift for the rest of my life. The man God used to touch my life in that critical hour was a man whose name I never learned. I wish I had. I encountered him at the cemetery a week or so after the funeral. Here is what I wrote on that day:
"I went out to the grave today.
I was sad as I trudged through section 5 looking for #598. Reduced to a number seemed as wrong as my foot tracks marring the snow as I looped the aisles. My search was leading me toward some workers near the west edge. I bent my chin against the bitter wind and moved closer when one of the workers caught sight of me and moved toward me. He asked what number I was looking for. "Five, five ninety eight," I said. His coworker overheard and from the cab of the big machine he was working called to know what name. "Larry Trosen," I said.
He pointed to a grave five feet away. "He's right there, ma'am."
I felt better. Not a number, he's right there. I snapped a photo, turned and walked a direct route back to my car, wind forgotten, and without a thought about what my feet were doing to the snow. I pray God will bless the worker to whom a grave is more than a numbered pixel on a map. Bless him for knowing the grave has a name."
That unnamed worker started me on the course that led to where I am today, considering a permanent move to Saipan. The worker's words jogged me out of my lethargy. Until that moment I had been thinking my only option was to go live with one of my children, something that would have made me a dependent forever. His words gave me the courage to jump into an unknown pool.
I am about to jump again. Key people in my life this past year have prepared me for the next segment in my life. I will keep you posted as I go along. For now, though, I just want to encourage you to know that God uses people to take us from what is to what will be, to the extent that we are willing to touch and be touched by others. We are not designed to live in isolation. Thank you all for praying for me this summer. The journey continues. Hurdles abound. Jesus is Lord. Next time, I will try to explain the method the Nazarene Church uses to place missionaries and where I am in that process, along with what I see as my options. As you pray for me, pray knowing I am in the world between worlds. The lethargy is real. The temptation to just give up and "be normal" is real. At the same time, the desire to jump into the next pool is equally real and getting stronger. I've lived an irregular life. It appears that pattern will continue for the next while... if I have the courage to keep moving forward.
To be open, vulnerable, genuine, movable, and willing to touch and be touched by people in my world is my desire. You too? The journey certainly continues!
Much love,
Amy
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