I
spent this entire past week at the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton
College, just outside Chicago. I've studied at the Wade once before,
last spring, for just 3 days. That time, I got a lot of work done but
felt rather as if it took me the whole time to get oriented to the
collection, services, materials, methods, and etiquette of the place.
So this time I had an advantage, but really didn't use much of that
knowledge, because I spent the entire time on one manuscript.
Unfortunately,
my hosts and I got a 24-hour 'flu and passed it around every two
days; Becky got it on Saturday, Sean got it on Monday, and I got it
on Wednesday, right in the middle of my research week. That was a
pretty miserable day. I had a monstrous long commute—2 ½ hours on
various sorts of public transportation—which meant I sacrificed
sleep to spend more time in the reading room, wearing down any immune
defense I may ordinarily have had. So I started out Wednesday feeling
just a bit queasy, and by noontime was spoiling the work of my fellow
researcher with requests for a ride to the pharmacy, access to his
car to sleep it off, trying to minimize contamination and the
disgusting circumstances of stomach 'flu, and having to bother Becky
to rent a zip car and come pick me up. Sigh.
But
I was back at it almost as soon as I could stumble out of the
apartment again, and accomplished my One Big Task.
This
is all personal, and irrelevant to the task and to the topic of this
blog. But Charles Williams has a way of creeping into my
interpretations of ordinary events, so that I read the narrative of
even a bout of 'flu through the lens of providence.
Yet
while it was happening, I didn't know how to interpret what must be a
“message from God.” I mean, isn't everything a message from God?
But it's kind of arrogant to think it's a message directly to me,
isn't it? Did he design that rose bush, that weather pattern, that
illness, just for me? Well, the beauty is that He can design
everything for everyone in an equation with way more variables than
is mathematically conceivable. Well, at least, in the mathematics of
humanity.
And
then there's the massive problem of thinking that the “message,”
if it is a message, is directly and simplistically interpretable by
me. Here's one question of interpretation: I didn't know if I should
take the massive challenges of a horrendous commute, an enormous
sleep deficit, and then an illness that put me out of commission as
signs that I should stop striving? Was the “text” of these events
supposed to tell me I couldn't do it? Was it foreshadowing the fact
that I will never accomplish my academic dreams?
Or
was it meant to push me on to strive harder? Is a goal accomplished
through larger difficulties more valuable than one achieved with
relative ease? Was this a test to make me work harder, to prove to
myself (and anyo/One else?) that I was serious about it?
I
have no idea. But I did accomplish the task I set out to do. And that
will be the next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment