The scenic route

why am i frustrated?

its how i've felt all day.  just frustrated.  over stupid things.  which means i'm not really upset about those things.  i'm upset over something else.  so what the heck is frustrating me so much?

i got mad when i couldn't hear my voice mail, and upset when my peanut butter cookies turned out to be really salty for some reason. i got mad when i landed a job interview tomorrow. WHATS WRONG WITH ME? THIS IS A GOOD THING!

a cloud then settled itself over my head for the rest of the day.

so around midnight i then decided to go for a jog.  thinking maybe i would find some kind of epiphany in the darkness.  that God would enlighten me.  and while the jog did do well to clear my head i came to no such realizations.  although i did feel some terror when i was still a quarter of a mile away from my house and i heard a pack of  yelping coyotes in the distance.  now no jogging after eleven. at least not alone.

then i came home and sat down at the computer only to feel a mouse crawl over my foot.  that was an hour ago. my feet or still propped up off the floor.

(sigh)

i think when it comes down to it i'm having some patience/control issues.

if you had asked me when i was six years old where i would be when i was twenty three i would have told you that i would be in egypt digging up mummies and reading hieroglyphs, married, and with hair down to my ankles.

if you had asked me the same question when i was sixteen i would have told you that i would be starving in chicago working part time as a barista but full time working on my acting dreams.

if you had asked me a year ago where i would be now i would have said "no idea, wherever God is leading."

i'm not frustrated with the prospect that i'm going to have to get a job in food service right now.  if this is what i need to do now, then this is what i need to do.  i'm not going to not work just because i can't find the job that i want.

but i have this really bad habit of feeling trapped when i make decisions, like i'm locking myself into one life forever.  if i get a job as a waitress, i'm going to be thinking, "what if i'm a waitress forever?"

which is a ridiculous thought.

there's what i want, and there's what "God wants.  and most of the time i think that what I want is the same as what God wants, and to be honest i'm not sure.  but one thing i'm sure of is that we disagree on how to get there.  God has a tendency of taking us the long way.  we get annoyed (and by we i mean i) because we think that he's doing it to intentionally frustrate us, or to show us the scenic route or something like that.  but in all liklihood its because we have some more growing to do before we reach our destination and the shortcut would get us there too early.

i want to get out of this house.  i want to have a job where i am ministering to people all the time.

but right now...today i got frustrated every time something didn't happen when i wanted it to, or didn't turn out how i wanted it to.  and right now in life i'm frustrated because things aren't happening when i want them to or how i want them to.

but...

i've started jogging recently.  i've tried "starting" before but it never took.  this time i'm actually doing it.  i'm dieting too.  not perfectly so but 90% sticking to it.  i was thinking yesterday about how if i had only started this sooner, like two years ago, or four, or six. i would already be healthy.  that was annoying to me because i knew the me of the past would have been so inpatient about the progress or lack there of she was making.  i know that because i'm inpatient now.  but i also know that i will never achieve anything unless i keep at it.

but at the same time, i know i wouldn't have been able to do it back then.  i know because i tried and i didn't.    something always got in the way.  i would be thinking about homework whenever i exercised, or wanted to exercise, and would opt to do that instead.  or something else like that.  i was always at a time in my life or a situation where i was incapable of committing, of focusing on it.

i take comfort in knowing that i did what i could when i could.  someday i'll be doing what i want to do with my life and i will think with frustration about how i could have been doing it all along had i started sooner, but will know in my heart that as of right now (future me's past) i'm doing what i can, when i can.

it really doesn't matter what i think.  i could turn my life over and over in my mind and think woulda coulda shoulda.  i can be mad its not different or have peace in how it is, or faith that it will change.  it really doesn't matter, because none of it will ever change the truth and that is that God is good.  no matter what i am or doing or think or feel, God is still good.