mind the gap

The DC Metro is far cleaner and a million times less chaotic than in New York - the NYC  subway system is a wild place. When I first moved, I was entirely unprepared for how to navigate the giant silver cars, both in regards to the direction they moved, as well as what happens inside of them. The things I’ve seen on these cars…the people I’ve met getting off of them…I could write a novel. When you board the train in DC, a strip of lights flashes to indicate the approaching car and to remind you that there is a gap between where you are, and where you’re stepping. They do this in London too, in a beautiful little British accent that you can’t help but want to listen to - “please mind the gap between the train and the platform.” 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about these gaps. Not necessarily the space between me and the trains I take, but more-so the space between where I am, and where I want to be. That frustrating, sometimes agonizing but ultimately good-for-us gap between who we are now, and who we want to become. Between what we have and what we want. Between the promise and its fulfillment. I’ve been really minding that gap, and right now, it feels very, very wide. 

For most of my life, I have been a pretty black and white person. Justice-oriented, I often found it hard to live in the gray. But in recent years, I’ve learned that most of life, most of faith, most (actually) of the pursuit of justice, and even of love, is getting comfortable here in the tension. Things are not always all good or all bad, they are good and hard, beautiful and messy, wild and pure - all at the same time. And often, we have to hold in our hands that things that shouldn’t exist at the same time often do. When we can’t understand this, problems arise, and we can often run from the very thing God is using to form and bless us. We see it as all-hard and all-bad, and we are unable to understand that right there alongside all that is beauty and promise and refining grace. 

In the same way, maybe we have to learn to live and lean into the in-between. The formation in the middle holy ground of all that we are, and all that we hope to become. 

So maybe the goal isn’t even necessarily where we want to be, but how we are being formed along the way. As someone with a pretty relentless desire for growth, I can often find myself running and pushing and climbing towards the ideal version of myself and my circumstances. So much so that I can forget to enjoy, embrace, and encounter who I am in the middle of it all, the blessings and gifts along the way. 

This reminds me of Shauna Niequist as talks about a concept called bittersweet, “the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful, that there is a sliver of lightness on even the darkest of nights, a shadow of hope in in every heartbreak, and that rejoicing is no less rich when it contains a splinter of sadness.” I love this. An all sweet life rots our teeth and makes us unhealthy, but all-bitter makes us hardened and cynical. So we exist in the in-between, the tension of the two that should cancel each other out, but don’t. 

So, I’ll continue to mind the gap. I’ll continue to pursue growth and venture on towards who I want to become. But I will do it with less ache and yearn, and more awe and attention. I will hold space for the things in life that are challenging but wonderful, not running because they force to places that I did not know I could go, to dig up what I never knew had been poisoning the ground. And mostly, I’ll trust that God is one who forms me and shapes me to look more like Himself, a process and not a destination.