I mean, except for the way that I didn't ask, exactly.
* * *
A few weeks after starting my job, a got a postcard from a friend. He said, "I hope you are feeling like your adult, real world life is fulfilling and challenging..."
I just so happened to receive that letter on a day when I felt those things, but I answered him something like this: "Last week I was afraid I was wasting the only life I have, but today is better. I think all my angst was a result of a headache and too-little sleep."
Funny how that matters, I told my friend. It makes me think of something C.S. Lewis wrote, that how good we are is more dependent on what we ate for breakfast than we like to imagine.
* * *
There was this book I read when I was a kid, a funny sci-fi story where a girl gets trapped in a virtual reality game and can't get out. The whole story is about her efforts to escape. Near the end she starts crying, and that's when the game lets her leave.
Because it was designed to be hard, but not that hard.
* * *
The past few weeks have felt so, so difficult. The work that The Housemate and I are doing isn't hard, exactly, but it's technically quite challenging, and requires hours and hours of highly focused concentration. My project has had a lot of road bumps. There's been a lot of - hm, how to say it. A lot of not inconsequential issues for me to learn about and deal with; the anti-vibration table being mis-aligned and causing mechanical stress on my cells, air bubbles in the solution exchange system, cells sticking to the coverslips, the cell-culture room overheating. Etc.
And my personality is such that I am nearly always much more likely to try to sit and reason/work my way out of a hardship than ask.
* * *
One of my lab mentors got back from a work trip last week and came in yesterday to help try and solve some of my technical issues. A few minutes in and he said, "Well, this is obviously not working right," thumping on the anti-vibration table. He shook the Farraday cage and tugged on some cables, and a few moments later said, "Alright. I think I fixed all your problems."
And he was right.
Today the woman who is overseeing my project stopped by my little cave. "I heard S___ solved the problem, hm?" she asked. "The table, right?"
I nodded.
"I never would have thought of that," she said. "Huh."
* * *
Okay, so what am I even trying to say, all these scattered shards...
The past few weeks the Big Boss has been telling me, "Emily, you have to ask questions." And I would get so frustrated, because I felt like I was. I would ask, and I would try to apply what I learned, and nothing was working.
But I think I wasn't asking the right questions. I wasn't asking the right people. I wasn't chasing down the question, knocking on every door I could.
* * *
On Monday morning I woke up with a stiff neck. I must have slept in a funny position or something. So Monday and Tuesday I was in pain. Tuesday evening when I was biking home from the NIH campus, I was thinking about how it was probably actually dangerous to be biking, because I couldn't turn my neck.
I was frustrated with work. Stymied, confused. I was in pain. I was tired. My life felt very hard.
I find it is less easy to be optimistic and joyful when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, so to speak. Less easy to find fulfillment, meaning.
* * *
This morning, during lab meeting, I just got this lovely sense that it isn't supposed to be this hard.
You know, I didn't actually end up asking the right question, ever, but the problems got resolved anyway. I told the Boss tonight that today was the best day I've had yet.
* * *
Maybe what I'm trying to say is this -
this whole week I've been thinking about that phrase ask and you shall receive.
At work, that means - well, it means work, yeah? (Usually, at least), it means chasing people down, asking variants of the same question over and over again, it means reading scientific papers and trawling through the vast recesses of the internet.
This morning, though, the bone-deep sense I got that things aren't supposed to be this hard... it was like a lesson in grace. Imagine if God was waiting around for us all to have the right question. I, for one, would never get anywhere.
No, instead it feels like sometimes God is just ready to open the door to abundant life even if we barely have the energy to crawl up on the porch.
* * *
A few weeks after starting my job, a got a postcard from a friend. He said, "I hope you are feeling like your adult, real world life is fulfilling and challenging..."
I just so happened to receive that letter on a day when I felt those things, but I answered him something like this: "Last week I was afraid I was wasting the only life I have, but today is better. I think all my angst was a result of a headache and too-little sleep."
Funny how that matters, I told my friend. It makes me think of something C.S. Lewis wrote, that how good we are is more dependent on what we ate for breakfast than we like to imagine.
* * *
There was this book I read when I was a kid, a funny sci-fi story where a girl gets trapped in a virtual reality game and can't get out. The whole story is about her efforts to escape. Near the end she starts crying, and that's when the game lets her leave.
Because it was designed to be hard, but not that hard.
* * *
The past few weeks have felt so, so difficult. The work that The Housemate and I are doing isn't hard, exactly, but it's technically quite challenging, and requires hours and hours of highly focused concentration. My project has had a lot of road bumps. There's been a lot of - hm, how to say it. A lot of not inconsequential issues for me to learn about and deal with; the anti-vibration table being mis-aligned and causing mechanical stress on my cells, air bubbles in the solution exchange system, cells sticking to the coverslips, the cell-culture room overheating. Etc.
And my personality is such that I am nearly always much more likely to try to sit and reason/work my way out of a hardship than ask.
* * *
One of my lab mentors got back from a work trip last week and came in yesterday to help try and solve some of my technical issues. A few minutes in and he said, "Well, this is obviously not working right," thumping on the anti-vibration table. He shook the Farraday cage and tugged on some cables, and a few moments later said, "Alright. I think I fixed all your problems."
And he was right.
Today the woman who is overseeing my project stopped by my little cave. "I heard S___ solved the problem, hm?" she asked. "The table, right?"
I nodded.
"I never would have thought of that," she said. "Huh."
* * *
Okay, so what am I even trying to say, all these scattered shards...
The past few weeks the Big Boss has been telling me, "Emily, you have to ask questions." And I would get so frustrated, because I felt like I was. I would ask, and I would try to apply what I learned, and nothing was working.
But I think I wasn't asking the right questions. I wasn't asking the right people. I wasn't chasing down the question, knocking on every door I could.
* * *
On Monday morning I woke up with a stiff neck. I must have slept in a funny position or something. So Monday and Tuesday I was in pain. Tuesday evening when I was biking home from the NIH campus, I was thinking about how it was probably actually dangerous to be biking, because I couldn't turn my neck.
I was frustrated with work. Stymied, confused. I was in pain. I was tired. My life felt very hard.
I find it is less easy to be optimistic and joyful when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, so to speak. Less easy to find fulfillment, meaning.
* * *
This morning, during lab meeting, I just got this lovely sense that it isn't supposed to be this hard.
You know, I didn't actually end up asking the right question, ever, but the problems got resolved anyway. I told the Boss tonight that today was the best day I've had yet.
* * *
Maybe what I'm trying to say is this -
this whole week I've been thinking about that phrase ask and you shall receive.
At work, that means - well, it means work, yeah? (Usually, at least), it means chasing people down, asking variants of the same question over and over again, it means reading scientific papers and trawling through the vast recesses of the internet.
This morning, though, the bone-deep sense I got that things aren't supposed to be this hard... it was like a lesson in grace. Imagine if God was waiting around for us all to have the right question. I, for one, would never get anywhere.
No, instead it feels like sometimes God is just ready to open the door to abundant life even if we barely have the energy to crawl up on the porch.
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