In a flight of curiosity, I typed each letter into dictionary.com. F-R-U-S-T-R-A-T-E-D. As I read the responding entry, I couldn’t help but feel the pit in my stomach growing larger and larger with each line.

frus⋅trate:

[fruhs-treyt] -trat⋅ed, -trat⋅ing, adjective –verb (used with object)

1. to make (plans, efforts, etc.) worthless or of no avail; defeat, nullify

2. disappointed

3. having feelings of  or filled with frustration; dissatisfied

thwart:

–verb (used with object)

1. to oppose successfully; prevent

2. to baffle ( a plan or purpose).

From a 10,00 foot level the specifics that have been causing my frustration are a moot point; I think I’m in a season where life isn’t coming easily. I push and try, and my plans are worthless and to no avail. I have decided to not try, and I am still disappointed and successfully opposed.

Things don’t turn out the way that I want them to be. My professional life just hasn’t come together in the way that it should. There are moments where I look at my family and say, “I never asked for this God. This is not what I wanted.” There are even places in the writing when I feel like it’s a silly pursuit and easily thwarted.

The frustrations come and go in waves. There are days like yesterday when the frustration gets to me and makes me furiously angry.  My prayers sound much like, “God where are you? Have you left me to fend for myself? Do you even care? They call you the God who provides, but to me that is just hearsay.”

Then there are days where I feel at peace even though the tension is still there. On those days the prayers sound more like this, “God I know you are there. I don’t  feel you or see you, but they say you provide, so I am going to sit knowing that you are bigger than my frustrations.”

The feeling of frustration never leaves, it’s just that some days bothers me a lot more than others.

I imagine that this flux between being frustrated and ok  is just what life is like. School doesn’t work the way it should, there’s surprise classes that you didn’t know that you were missing right before graduation, there are cars that breakdown when you are late, there are husbands that pick fights with you when you don’t have a shred of patience to give.  At least thinking these things happen to other people makes me feel like God isn’t singling me out. Like he isn’t starving me of my plans or progress simply because He’s mean or wants to teach me some sort of lesson.  I hate it when people tell you that.

I was having this conversation with HNB last night, where he says to me, “Jenni, I don’t know why these things haven’t settled. Maybe God wants to make you learn something.” The problem that I have with this idea is that it makes God seem like the parent that starves their child so that they can learn to appreciate vegetables. Not feeding a child, and simply giving them snacks for several months might keep them alive, but I certainly don’t feel like it’s loving. And if God is not loving, then I don’t know that I want to do this anymore. “Thanks God, I really wish we could have stayed friends. But I can’t continue to trust someone who is so mean sometimes. Frustrating people isn’t nice. Friends just don’t do that for no reason.“

Pragmatism and Dreams.

The other theme that has been coming up this week is the idea of dreams. Unmet dreams. Impossible dreams. Dreams that burn your insides. Dreams that you look at and say, “Yeah, that would never happen.“

See, the problem is that I am a true pragmatist. When someone gives me an idea or dream my knee jerk reaction is to say, “yeah, but HOW?” I want to know how much money it’s going to take, and where is that going to come from, how much time do we need, and how many people do we need to get on board. What are the areas of expertise and how do I get those people on my team. I want to chart it, plan it, schedule it, budget it, and put it on a spreadsheet.

VS.

The problem is, this mentality takes dreams and literally smashes them at the kneecaps.

I have recently been awakened to the notion that I do not know how to dream big. I drown myself in questions. Instead of letting myself have big ideas, grandiose dreams, and  fantastic speculations I crush them upon  conception. Dreams are something that need to have a impregnation, an attachment, a nurturing, and a birthing. I discovered that I have a knack for stifling the process.  I question and rationalize and scrutinize them to death. It’s as if I implement a process of harsh criticism that results in spontaneous miscarriages.

I have been realizing that in doing this I don’t let myself to be free. I complicate the process.  It is just like running or dancing.  I am not free to run when I let the technicalities of physics and movement take over. There is no leaping, falling, jumping, bounding, or flinging when there are meticulous calculations.

Part of me is convinced that I have simply been so frustrated with the plans I have that have continually gone unmet, that I have forgotten how to dream. Dreaming takes an element of trust and vulnerability. In some ways I think my heart has become a bit hardened to dreaming. It almost feels like a waste of time. I hate to say that out loud because it makes me jaded, but part of me thinks that it might be true.

Frustration is a heartbreaking emotion. It is angry and hurt. And it is tired. Its hard to convince yourself to dream, and run, and breathe, and be risky when you are heartbroken and hurting.

So, my question is, “How do we start?” How do we leave the land of overwhelming questions  and find our way to the land of frivolous dreaming?  How do we stop planning? How do we hold frustration in one hand and hopefulness in the other? Do we have to re-learn how to dream? Is it even  possible to dream when you are this disappointing and frustrated? How do we look at your friends who are being catapulted forward in the same areas that frustrate you, but still know that God is a provider even when it doesn’t feel like it?

Ive decided that for me it is going to start like this with one simple statement:

“God, I am so frustrated by unmet passions that I have forgotten how to dream. Help me to dream. Show me what it is to dream wildly, and not to worry about if they’ll happen or not. Let me dream. ”

Im still wildly frustrated. I still have loads of unmet needs. But this is the only way I know how to get out of the corner Ive somehow been painted into.

And while I pumped out all of my energy from the day, a memory resounded through my mind. A few years ago I was in the midst of another dark night lit by only the moon. I remember this moment very vividly – not only for the emotional significance, but for the astonishingly sharp visual that seemed to pair with it. It was the middle of the night when I was en route to New Zealand. In leaving LA, I was leaving behind a host of problems, my life was essentially in wreckage, and I was holding it all together with McGiver-style bubble gum and tape. Little did I know that when I landed in New Zealand I would promptly be deconstructed and begin the process of slowly piecing my life back  together. That moment on the plane was probably one of the darkest, more anxiety ridden nights of my life.

As I flew through the dark night, thousands of feet in the air, the darkness was piercing black. But the moon was soft white, illuminating the ocean as a blanket of sparking diamonds. The night was so clear that even from my height, I could make out the tiniest islands down there in the in the massive blue, and I could see the white caps of waves washing over beaches. It was honestly one of the most beautiful sites I have seen in my life. I remember specifically with tears in my eyes I whispered under my breath, “God I don’t know where you are, and I am scared sh*tless, but here I am.”

Running along the bay tonight, it was the first time I had recalled this memory in years. And yet, tonight was a night much like the one I had on Air New Zealand almost 3 years ago. The night was black. Purple. Blue. The bay was black, and yet the moon shone it’s warm light down on the water, making little diamonds sparkle down the current. And all of the homes and cars on the other side of the bay all shone like little cafe lights in a far off place.

I had to smile. I can’t help but feel like in life we always come full circle. Here I am again, lost and a mess. This time not in my identity, but rather in my career, passion and profession. I’ve just decided to pursue freelance writing, and I can’t lie; I feel like I have given up safety to chase ghosts. Here I am standing in the midst of the moon light whispering, “God I don’t know where you are, and I am scared sh*tless, but here I am.”

But here is the cool thing: I’m not scared the way I was before. The night can be a very terrifying place if you let it be. The first time in my walk through the dark night, I remember being gut wrentchingly anxious, scared, unsure and looking at all of the long shadows and unknown sounds like they were going to over take me. This time, I feel like I have have come to love the dark night. The air is cooler. The colors are astounding. the lights seem to sparkle in a way that captures my heart. And you know, moon shadows are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. The idea that we can play with our shadows in the darkness of night is a notion beyond my own mind.

This time around I realize I have learned to relax in the darkness, to enjoy the night. I know last time I saw this vision, it marked the beginning of the most adventurous, beautiful, terrible, growing, stretching, rewarding journey I had been on in my life. This time I have slowed the anxiety and I can see the signs for what they are. And I can only hope that I am standing on the brink of something half as great as the story I embarked on en route to New Zealand.

 There’s a lot going on below the surface. In fact, I don’t think I slept much last night. I woke up periodically throughout the night thinking about the job, ex boyfriends, new guys, moving, writing, not writing, money, sleeping, and not sleeping.

I was hoping that yoga and breakfast with Andy this morning would relax me and pull me out of my head, but I think it only made it worse. I’m sitting on my bed, reading old blogs and listening to Jason Mraz.  I’ve decided today is a calm storm. Or maybe, it feels like when you are watching a movie, at an intense action scene – like a bomb blowing up. Sometimes they can slow the frames to the point where you watch all of the fragments explode in detrimental beauty. It’s a really good scene if there is some killer background track to go along with the visual.

That’s how I feel today. My life is in flux. There are things quietly raging in my mind that I can’t turn off. It’s like emotional shrapnel spraying in all directions. Majestic and slow like splatter paint.  It makes me realize, whether you are a juju person, a karma person, a “Secret” person, or a prayer person….we are out of control. Call it God, or the universe, or fate, or human will…sometimes the world goes crazy in the space between our ears and there’s not much that we can do to fix it, or to reconcile the dissonance.

At some point in my life, I had been dating someone who was really good at getting me out of my head. He could shake me up, and pull me off the melancholy fly strip. I don’t get stuck there often, but it does happen. In lieu of having someone around that knows me that way, I’m wondering what it would sound like to just sit here for a bit.

Often times, melancholy is an inclusive experience – maybe that’s just me being a creative. But it’s a feeling, and words, and music – all going on at the same time. Today, that looks and sounds like Jason Mraz. Sometimes it’s Jack Johnson or John Mayer that seem to fit the bill. But it’s is always something slow, upbeat, melancholy, but not depressing. Something that reminds me that even if the emotions spray though my brains like bullets, it can be beautiful.

  Jason, Jack, John and me. Having a splatter-paint-fest in the space between my ears.

And in case you’re wondering what melancholy sounds like…it sounds like this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocEOA1sAFvY]