No Vibe for Me
A recent article in The Atlantic appropriately titled Resolutions Are Not the Vibe for 2022 embodies and validates my status. I have no vibe. How about you? Not only do I feel too old to have a vibe, but weariness has become a nagging companion and reduced my patience for all the talk about vibes in the first place. I am still struggling to complete goals from these past few pandemic years, which at times can feel like emptily grasping at the wind. I have hit a wall just like my writing schedule did in the second half of last year. The momentum I once had to work on passion projects went kaput, only to be replaced with familiar though unhelpful cycles of saying “Yes” when I should have said “No” and vice versa.
I was all about starting 2022 enthusiastically anticipating what was next, but I am learning that forging ahead requires way more than comfortable traditions. Watching the famous Time Square New Year’s countdown or dining on the southern tradition of black-eyed peas have their place. However, in of themselves, they don’t practically jumpstart the engine of different or better days. Returning to old habits requires no effort and yet hijacks transformation. I struggle with bouts of rust, languish over what was or wasn’t rather than unwrapping the gift of agency God has given me to choose a path that, scary and demanding though it is, is what I need. Disruption, in my personal life and in the world, is teaching me once again just how critical it is that I constantly renew my mind.
Where I am right now reflects the lyrics of “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt,” that great preschool song: “We can’t go over it / We can’t go under it / We’re just gonna have to go through it.”
Going through it means I must detach myself from fixating on efficiency or regaining some aspects of what was. God is on the move. If I slow-down and refocus myself long enough I can grasp the moment and discover how to play my part.
This process, which is unfolding before my very eyes, has demanded fulfilling one of my long-delayed resolutions. After several years of procrastination, I finally poked around long enough to find a spiritual director. And wouldn’t you know it, she happens to be another African American woman who was born in South Carolina like me. Being in the Great White North, particularly on the west coast, this is a miracle God performed I think to remind me to stop making excuses for why I sometimes delay or altogether avoid pursuing the help that I need. It is hard to see the Lord move if you remain stuck in the quicksand of indecision and never try.
In our most recent session, she had me participate in a Visio Divina exercise examining “Joseph’s Dream,” a portrait by Rembrandt. But I was unable to concentrate on Joseph, Mary, or the illumination of the angel at Joseph’s side. I was instead distracted by the dark, seemingly dank, sad location that to me felt unfit for the King of Kings to make his earthly arrival.
However, I was reminded that Jesus does not need an ideal situation for anything. He is Jesus after all. Ann Voskamp writes in The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas that, “God favors the darkest places so you can see His light the brightest.” That statement exposed how I allow the debris of bad doctrine to misconstrue God’s holiness and replace its genuine meaning with my own version of Goldilocks looking for situations to be polished, perfect, and just right. My attitude resembles Moses’ initial response when God told him that he was being commissioned and sent to boldly tell Pharaoh to free the Israelites from slavery. But Moses asked God, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me.” (Exodus 4:1) Like him, I find myself responding to what God has revealed to me with my own long, laundry list of excuses and potential “what if” scenarios, looking to convey why I can’t do something or wondering if God may have chosen the wrong person for the Kingdom assignment. “God, I am not this or that,” I can hear myself saying. “I don’t have this skill or that credential, you know?” I might say not to be outdone by: “Lord, why not someone else?”
A spirit of hard-headedness leaves me marinating in a fixed mindset of disobedience and stagnation. Thankfully, God is ever loving and patient, but His will for my life remains the same. He does not change because I or any woman or man complains. As my heavenly Father, God basically keeps saying, “I am who I am, and I said what I said.” It is my job to adjust, to obey as best as I can, recognizing that He is good and perfect and all He asks of me is good and perfect.
Right here, regardless of what is swirling in the air, right now, no matter the lack of good vibrations, I am going to travel the unique path that offers life. The encouragement the Israelites had also applies to me. “God is within me, I will not fall; God will help me at the break of day” (this is an abbreviation of Psalm 46:5). We all struggle, yes. I know I do—however faith necessitates a decision to obey or disobey, resist or conform, serve God or serve myself.