I can’t stop thinking about Tromso, Norway this week. I’ve been making my way through the book Wintering by Katherine May and in the January section, there’s a chapter on her trip into the Arctic Circle to witness the northern lights. The natural phenomena has been on my own list for a while now, but it was the story she told of meeting the Sami people that captured me while reading. The Sami live in a swath of land where Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia come together. They care for reindeer (seriously) and live with the land. Something inside me sat up when I read about them and I haven’t been able to let go of it since. I want to go was the hope whispered inside me when I closed the book. I want to meet them.
What I’m getting to know in these first few weeks without an office job is that time is a funny thing. What I mean by that is I can use it, time, however I want. To someone who has faithfully reported to an office and a desk for eight years, the concept is nearly magical. Even still, habits are hard to break and last week included fighting off the compulsion to sit at my computer for at least eight hours a day working on my resume, portfolio and searching for jobs to apply for and companies to connect with. Eight strict hours in a desk is what I walked away from, isn’t it? It’s part of why I wanted a new way. Why, then, is the practice hard to release?
It makes me think of the word that I feel like I’ve been given this year — light. Not light as in sun, moon and stars, lamps, candles and campfires — but light as in “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Light as in easy to carry, airy maybe, ethereal if I’m feeling fancy. On the journey to what’s next in my life, I think I’m being asked to leave the heavy lifting to the God. I think that’s why light is supposed to mean to me. It’s much more my style, though, to pick up more than I can carry and prove that I can handle it. You know, the tilt-your-head-back-and-balance-the-top-box-under-your-chin kind of carry? The load-all-the-grocery-bags-on-your-arms-so-you-make-just-on- trip situation? The ask-for-more-assignments-and-sit-at-your-desk-the-requisite-eight-hours (even though you were done in five) method of proving yourself?
Last year the word expansive happened upon me one spring day as I walked on a nearby river trail. I was starting to feel the creep of hope that something was coming, that the time to leap was pulling into the station and then this word just fell on me near the bank of the Trinity. Expansive. Like a cardboard box opening up with sun beams stretching out. Like arms reaching into the sky and a face turned up to the light. Like boundary lines moving further out and small, trepidatious first steps marking a new journey. Expansive.
It’s true — I am in a new place now. I have indeed expanded my territory, but I don’t know this new country yet. And now, when it feels like there’s more work than ever, when it really feels all up to me, like I’ve got to razzle dazzle and tap dance for my dinner, I’m being asked to hold the light load instead. Leave the heavy to someone else, this Word tells me and see how light is an opportunity to watch what happens.
But what if I’m still exactly right here in six months? I worry. What if I don’t find my way? Do I even think I’m a good writer? Here comes the existential swirl down, down, down. God, you know the answers. Okay, okay — I remember, light. These questions are heavy. You told me light. I want to make it happen, but wearing the word light this year means I agree to remember who I am (and am not) and learn again there’s more going on than I can see or imagine.
Light is an invitation to be loved and cared for, tended to and treated with affection. All things from which I often try to wriggle away — and that’s tragic. May light lead to love and a new understanding of how God wants to care and bless me. I half believe it as I type, but God, may I see it come true.
