Progress

I am not a person who rushes making big decisions. I don't think this is true for everyone, but in my life a fairly significant choice will have to be made, on average, about once a year. My reaction is pretty consistent every time; I decide to take some time to pray, I pray, and then I fester. I wait for ages, partly pondering, partly hoping that the decision will be made for me. I think I know some of the reasons for this behaviour, but that's a whole other post right there. The point is, I don't make the big decisions in a hurry.

So when I chose to return from Arna to England in the summer, it was with a conviction that it was the right thing to do - that God had some way in which I could be useful to Him here. But that isn't really the way it's gone down so far; since September I've probably experienced the least productive four months of my adult life. I don't want to go into detail or try and analyse it here, but it's fair to say that the blogosphere hasn't been missing a great deal in my absence.

Adaptation, a film written by Charlie Kaufman, is (in part) a dramatisation of the writer's struggles in adapting the screenplay of the film, from a book about orchids. At one point, when Kaufman is at his most overwhelmed, despairing at his lack of productivity and inability to focus, he has a vision in which the author's photo on the dust cover of The Orchid Thief starts speaking to him. Like some kind of Native American spirit guide, but in hardback form, she counsels him, helping him see how to move forward. She makes him realise that he needs to draw his focus away from the situation as a whole and focus on the smaller issues, one at a time.

And that's sort of how things worked out for me. I didn't get a mystic vision from the bookcase but, one by one, things have begun to fall into order. Relationships that had depreciated in my time abroad have revived, thanks to the support of old friends. Tim and Vikki's wedding helped me to see again how valuable my family are - especially my parents, brothers and new sister. I've also managed to come by steady employment, a house to live in that's near my new place of work and a car to travel between the former and the latter.

It's a good start, and quite a leap from my situation a month ago. I still can't see too much of the path ahead, but I am looking forward to walking it, which is not something I've been able to say with confidence for a while.