Questions

Last night at church, this was read and it hit pretty close to home for me.  It is by Rainer Maria Rilke and goes:

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart, try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not now 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 then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

Right now I have a lot of questions - mostly about the future (both immediate and further down the road).  It makes me anxious and comforted at the same time.  Life's unpredictability has taught me that planning beyond tomorrow is pointless because things more often than not do not go the way you thought they would.  I've also learned that in the twists and turns of life, things turn out fine.  Actually, they turn out better than you thought they would.  It makes me afraid to throw out the playbook and itching to do it all at the same time.

So I am with my questions.  We sit together, work together, play together, hope together, and do life together.  I'm more okay with them tonight than I was last night.  I look forward to liking them, loving them, and then looking back to see that they have grown into answers without my ever knowing it.