Incomplete and Waiting

After two years of studying marriage and family therapy- during which I've thrown myself into the deep end- I find myself ending with a nagging sense of being incomplete...which seems appropriate.  For a while I had the notion that if I did just enough work I would be 'better', or at least have many of my issues close to resolved. I'm beginning to realize this is an untrue and impossible ideal. Of course, knowing that regardless of how much work I put into myself, that I will always be walking into another area of deficiency at first brought me low.  It brought me to a spot of neediness.  Which is right.

I imagine a tree planted as a seed, the acorn of a great oak, with the process of its growth being long and tedious.  Sometimes I find I am incapable of seeing any growth at all for long periods of time.  Adding to the naturally slow process of acorn to oak are the storms, diseases, insects, and other interruptions which injure and slow down the tree from shooting up.  Often, as the tree is battered and beaten, it is growing deeper roots, sometimes producing fruit, but on the whole showing very little in the way of extensive outer growth.  This is where my analogy gets a little nerdy.  In Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' there is a particular tree, the White Tree, which seems to represent and hold the authority of the kingdom of Gondor.  For years this tree was sitting dead and broken by the pool in the kings courtyard.  Thus representing the stunted and haulted growth of the kingdom.  It wasn't until the king returns and replants a new sapling that the kingdom can once again thrive.  Here is where our stories intersect.  It's not just that I continually find myself incomplete and in need of further growth, but that my healing and growth cannot happen apart from the hands of the king.

It's right for me to both work hard and delve deeply into my growth spiritually, mentally and emotionally; and in the same breath to necessarily wait upon and deeply need Abba to heal and bring me to complete fruition.  I'm finding that it is prudent in personal growth to keep the long view, which is that my progress, growth, healing, and completion is going to take time.   Yet time alone will not suffice.  What I absolutely need in order to arrive at completion is the return of the king.