Unfinished

"You'll have to be ok with things remaining undone."

This is the wise counsel a long-time pastor shared with me a few weeks ago as we chatted about my upcoming graduation, the call process and my potential future ministry.  

My first thought was: "Ohh, I love that!  I'm already really good at leaving things unfinished."  Examples: laundry, dishes, the 3 mi run than turned into 2...  

But the two weeks older and wiser me is not sleeping well as I contemplate all that I have not done in my four year MDiv journey.  

There are so many classes I'll never get to take, so many forums and lectures I missed.  I haven't yet mailed my graduation invitations.  I keep searching for potential jobs and thinking "I need to send them a cover letter" and the "need to send to" list just gets longer and longer and I haven't done the simple task of the sending.  I keep seeing friends on campus and saying: "We should hang out!" before graduation and also texting the friends I never see anymore and making plans we both know we'll "reschedule."  There were at least 49 things I was going to do "around the house" before May because we might move and our place is nowhere near ready to sale.  Readings for my final classes?  Forget it. Various surveys the various on campus offices are badgering seniors about? Lol.  

I didn't go to yoga yesterday. I didn't hit the treadmill today. (Yet?) We have three blue apron meals chilling in the fridge that arrived Sunday - what have we been eating? Whatever it is, we didn't cook it.  

I won't be able to finish the list of the unfinished but as I consider all the things that I know I haven't yet done that someone, somewhere, maybe even me is telling me should be done, as the undone completely obfuscates the few completed things I've managed, I just feel like a mass of anxiety. Totally unlike me. Really. I mean, I drink a lot of coffee and that sometimes makes me act anxious, but I'm generally pretty calm.  

Not today. Isn't this absurd: As I approach the end of this journey of both four years and thirty-three, as I anticipate graduating grad school, the greatest achievement of my academic career thus far, as I approach this finish line all I can think of is the unfinished.

Why?

We have a cultural obsession with busy-ness. I don't mean we all inherently like it, but almost all of us participate in it. This is compounded with a need for accomplishment and affirmation. As I approach this milestone, I'm aware that I am comparing myself to others. Yea, it's pretty good, but what about my classmates who are earning this same achievement younger than me? What about those who took four years and managed not just one degree, but two? In comparison, my degree seems somehow flimsier. And what good is that degree if I don't end up with a job, if I can't show something for it? These cultural expectations call into question the certainty of the accomplishment. Though I am nearing the finish line, I am so unaccustomed to standing in a moment of done-ness that I have to keep heaping new expectations upon myself. I have to keep finding reasons I don't measure up because the notion that I could already be entirely enough feels absurd and dirty. But it's true, on graduation day and every other day.  

It's true. It is done. Finished. On graduation day and every day. A favorite verse: Psalm 46:10, "Cease striving and know that I am God.  I will be exalted..."  Or, take Elizabeth Gilbert's summary of this verse from Eat, Pray, Love: "Sit quietly for now and cease your relentless participation." 

Cease your relentless participation.

Be ok with things remaining undone.  

I am not the only one approaching a finish line in the sand - it's May, whether graduation is approaching or not, the end of school is, and the responsibilities and expectations are crushing.  

Stop right now and imagine what it will be like if that final day arrives and your to-do list is not completed.  

Go ahead and prepare yourself for the inevitable. I feel entirely confident that your to-do list, like mine, is unrealistic.  

So? What happens if your finish line date approaches and you're "not ready"? Does the graduation fail to happen? Do your kids (or you) have to stay in school because you didn't get around to making muffins for the class or some other such nonsense?  

Nah. You have no power over these things.

None.  

No matter how long the list is.  

It's time to let it go because our frenzied activity is little more than the fidget spinners you want to throw out the window (maybe a tiny bonfire of to-do lists and fidget spinners is in order...). It's just a way for us to feel alive, isn't it? Something mindless to hold in our hands to trick us into feeling like we're doing something, when we really ought to be sitting still.*  

Unfinished.

This is our perpetual state, actually. In those moments that we can't escape the reality of our inability to complete, don't we rejoice with the reality that we shall never stop becoming.

That feeling of unfinished is entirely true and good because we were not created to be completed with accomplishments - with mere pieces of paper. It does not matter at all how fancily the calligraphy glistens, how bold the word "Masters" may be.  We were not created to be completed with the final check on a list.  

We were not created to be so simple, our souls were not made to be so contained.  

It's May, glorious spring brimming with all the promises of nature's renewal. What if we celebrate the perpetual beginnings this great, wide world has to offer. What if we feel the feeling of our unfinished-ness and really feel it, letting it remind us of both our finitude and our connection with the Eternal, and don't allow it to become a black hole of anxiety and attribute our soulful never-ending-growth to something as silly as the piles of dirty laundry and dishes.

Unfinished.  What a glorious, hope-filled promise.