on not learning

I feel like I’ve been stumbling through life lately. Just doing the next thing and not really growing in any noticeable way.

I like to figure things out. I like to know the why; I don’t like unanswered questions. I like problems to be tied up in a nice, pretty bow; I like to have an answer for everything.

So, as I sit here eating a blueberry muffin at 5:56 on a Saturday evening (my life is super exciting), I want to write a blog post. Scratch that. I feel like I need to write a blog post. But the problem is, I don’t know what to write about.

I don’t have any answers. I don’t feel like I’m learning anything important lately.

Sure, I’m navigating a new job and learning skills I need for that, and I’m (finally?) learning that sometimes you can’t read all pages of the textbook. Oh—I’m also learning that there are more entertaining shows to watch than Last Man Standing (sorry, Parker). But nothing of real substance…nothing that I can write about in a nice, organized essay.

Here’s the thing: I have a lot of questions right now. With so much pain in the world, I don’t know exactly what to think (besides the fact that God is always, always good and His way is always, always best). With so much of my post-college future unknown, I don’t know exactly where to direct my energy. And with several essays from two classes due tomorrow, I have decided that writing something irrelevant to either class is the best use of my time.

Ahem.

But maybe I am learning something, in the midst of all the not-learning. Maybe I’m learning that it’s okay to not know. Maybe I’m learning that it’s okay to go through seasons of life where you don’t have any lightbulb moments; it’s okay to have seasons where you wrestle with the hard questions. Maybe the purpose for these seasons is to get life experience to give momentum to the next season—to fuel the next lightbulb moment.

Maybe, just maybe, I need to learn to be okay with that. Not okay with being stagnant (because I don’t think that’s ever a good thing), but okay with not having all the answers and slowly stumbling along the path.

Maybe that’s what I’m learning.

See—look. There. I tied my problem up with a nice pretty bow.