“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answers.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
I love questions.
Often times, when I meet someone new or I am trying to get to know someone better I ask them a lot of questions. These questions can be slightly silly, such as “What is your favorite childhood memory? If you could have some sort of super power, what would you want and why? Or if you had to get rid of one color in the spectrum, what color would it be?” But my favorite questions are those that get to the heart of a person: “What is one thing you can't live without? What is your biggest hope? What is your biggest fear? What is one thing you deeply desire to accomplish before you leave this world?” It takes time before I can ask those last few questions, as a certain level of trust is required. But man, I do love to ask questions and learning through those questions!
However, I’ve learned something with regards to my love for questions – I tend to favor only the questions that have answers.
I definitely have a double-standard when it comes to questions. I seem to only love questions when they have clear-cut answers, and not the ones that are like a vast, dark, chasm - where you fall deep into its belly, never to see the light of day again!
Ok, I admit. That was a bit dramatic.
But honestly, don’t some of the “unanswerable questions” feel that way – that you’ve fallen into some dark pit, never again to find your way out? Sometimes I feel like my life is filled with such chasms…
I love the quote above. It was given to me by a co-worker about 9 months ago. During that time, I was doing a lot of searching, as if my life was one big question mark. I was in the middle of trying to determine my career path, my place of worship, friendships to pursue and friendships to end, and wondering if I’d ever be given the privilege of being a wife and mom. I found myself with a lot of questions… And I found that I HATED not having any of the answers.
I have always struggled to digest the seemingly unanswerable questions.
A few years ago, a friend of mine challenged me on something. We had been talking about the ways in which I work through situations in my life, and all the emotions that go along with those situations. All throughout high school and college, I journaled just about every day. Writing was my therapy, and I found that so often, I felt tremendously better after journaling. However, this friend challenged me to think that maybe it was only a temporary fix, that maybe it was really hurting more than healing. See, as someone who has worked as an administrative assistant for most of my life, I have gotten really good at organizing… at compartmentalizing. Everything has its place and is in order. That is exactly how I tend to treat my own life – as something that can be organized and compartmentalized. Journaling was my vehicle to do just that. If I could get those thoughts outside of myself, then I could sort them out on paper, analyze them, solve them, and be completely separated from them. However, this friend challenged me to “sit” in those situations, in those emotions. She wanted me to sit in the emotion of sadness, or anger, or joy, or frustration – to experience those things, and not put them on paper where I could separate myself from them. She told me that by separating myself, I wouldn’t fully work through it, and I wouldn’t get to experience the growth that comes from working through it. There is a transforming power when we “sit” in those moments for a bit. She wasn’t suggesting I dwell on those things, but she was suggesting that I refrain from seeking an immediate solution… We humans are so much about immediate gratification, aren’t we? Plus, she noted that if I chose to sit there, it would provide the opportunity for the person who is actually doing the transformative work, to "do His thing." That by allowing myself to “sit” in those moments, I’m actually saying, “Ok God, I don’t know how to fix this. I’m going to sit in it. You’ve got to be the one to do something with it.”
I took her challenge. I went for almost an entire year without journaling. I would blog every so often, but that wasn't as raw as journaling. To this day, I still struggle to journal. I will journal on occasion, but it isn’t as natural as it once was. It almost feels foreign to me. But I do think there have been some great benefits to my journal vacation.
The concept was such an interesting one that I can’t help but come back to it, now that I find myself yet again in a period of questioning. Right now, in my life, I have a ridiculous amount of questions. And along with those questions, I have very few answers. My first instinct? Answer the questions – answer them, and move on. But I wonder if both my friend and Rilke are right in their ideas – to sit with the questions. What would it look like for me to sit with the questions? What would like look like for me to live in those questions until some day, I stumble into the answers? What would it mean if I lived each day knowing I might not EVER get the answers – or at least not the answers I expect, or even want for that matter? Would I be ok with that?
What if the questions are even more important than the answers?
I often wonder about the molding power of questions – especially those that are unanswered. When I think about unanswered questions – I can’t help but feel like all I can do is trust… Trust that somehow, in someway, God is going to work it out, that He’s got it under control, and that He knows what’s best.
Maybe that’s the point of questions… If I HAD answers to my questions, I wouldn’t trust – I wouldn’t need to. If I knew how everything was going to work out, I would have absolutely no need for faith and trust.
But it’s so uncomfortable, right? Sitting in un-answered questions… So uncomfortable.
At least I’ve found others who are questioning right along with me – there’s some comfort in the fact that everyone out there has just as many questions as I do.
Ok, maybe not as many… I do have a LOT of questions.
But as I continue to journey, and as I continue to question, I can only pray that I learn how to better embrace the questions – that I learn to love them, to sit in them, and to relish in the fact that they are molding me and shaping, building my hope, faith and trust into something they wouldn’t have been without the questions.
May I learn to be patient towards all that is unresolved in my heart, and to love the questions themselves, and may I learn to fully trust and hope in the One who has all the answers.
(photo courtesy of svilen001 at www.sxc.hu)
