On a call with a friend recently, she mentioned how someone in her life was being stretched in a new job scenario. In that moment, I couldn't help but think, “Life is stretching.” The experience of stretching and re-stretching is the basis of what it is to be human, to move forward, to grow, to be in relationship, and to learn something new about the world, others, and ourselves. Stretching requires us to become more than we knew we were before, to align with a part of ourselves we may never have known existed if not for the stretch. In fact, I spent quite some time thinking on this after that call. I wondered, as I shared last time, if this is one of those pieces of the wisdom I get to gain through a difficult season.
After all, if not for the stretch, would I ever know what I was truly capable of in my lifetime? Would you? If not for being pushed beyond our current abilities, ways of living, perceiving, and believing, what would we miss? Would we be comfortable and content if nothing ever changed, if we never changed?
While I've wrestled and wrestled this season, as I contemplated my life apart from the stretch, I found myself deeply appreciating the challenges I've been facing. There's a certain measure of acceptance I've cultivated in not knowing what I don't know. There's a greater embrace of knowing what I do know. And, there's a contentment growing in me about both that's allowing me to sit in the silence, in the lack of clarity, and frankly, in the dark, without the panic or anxiety taking me under in the empty space.
What if one of the greatest gifts in this life is being stretched? And, what if we could cling to hope during times of great stretching because we simply couldn't wait to see what we were made up of as the process unfolded? Food for thought for me, and maybe for you, too, today.