A Metaphor

So I have been gone a while. This Spring was busy with teaching an advanced composition class, and Summer has been spent frantically writing on the dissertation. I have made pretty good progress, but after a lot of praying and soul searching, I have decided to wait another year before going on the market. More time for quality diss writing and blogging!

One of the insights that God blessed me with during this agonizing process was a personal metaphor. God is like Iron.

For the last eleven years, I have dealt with celiac disease. Basically, my body can't process gluten, the protein in most grains (like wheat and barley), which means I have to carefully monitor my diet. Because of the damage that eating gluten prior to diagnosis did to my poor insides, my body has a hard time absorbing common nutrients. It has really only been in the past couple of years that I have started to figure out what nutritional balance works for both my schedule and my body.

One of the nutrients that I just can't seem to get enough of is iron. I've never been a big meat eater, and big bowls of leafy greens are still not that appealing after a long day of teaching (although I do eat waay more vegetables than I did during undergrad). When I don't get enough iron, long story short is I get depressed and droopy. I start letting in all those insecure thoughts and worries, which of course leads to less motivation to be diligent at those things that I am supposedly awful at, and it spirals downwards from there. For me, at least, there is a pretty direct connection between that aspect of my body and my psyche.

When I take my iron supplement everyday, there is a noticeable difference in how I feel and react to situations. I still get really tired and draggy (grading and diss writing will do that to you), but there is not that same sense of hopelessness, of utter, bone-crushing fatigue. I might still have a hard time motivating myself to go to dance or yoga class, but when I go and start moving, I have more energy and feel less foggy then if I wasn't taking iron.

Similarly, I am realizing what it actually means to have God's presence as a constant in my life, even through the rough times. I remember being hyperaware of the idea that my life would not be super shiny and perfect just because I was now a Christian. God isn't a magic clean up button. But finding a path from knowing that intellectually to understanding it in every aspect of your life has been (and will continue to be) a hard journey.

I still deal with anger in my life on a somewhat regular basis. It is not the borderline uncontrollable, white hot anger that consumed my thoughts and directed every action that I struggled with in my late teens/early twenties. But it is still there. I have begun to realize that it will always be there to some extent, and that I will have to keep leaning on God. I will have to keep looking to Him for guidance in those situations that press everyone of my buttons with a sledgehammer.

But life with God is like life with iron. Neither one is a magic pill that makes all the boogeymen and night terrors vanish. But both are necessary constants in my life that require a conscious decision to pursue that path and make that effort. There will still be really frickin' difficult days, days where my eyes can't focus on the computer screen because I am so tired from wrestling with my theory chapter or days where I just can't stop thinking about all the ways that a person has wronged me. But if I keep taking my iron, if I keep looking to God, I will get through it. I will be supported and sustained through that time of physical and spiritual trial.