Playing with a Rubber-band

Wow, it is crazy how easy it is to go months without posting on here!  The truth is life has been crazy, and I guess it doesn’t really show signs of slowing down.  When you get right down to it, who actually has a life that slows down in you mid twenties?  Life only keeps going and growing and getting more complicated.  In the growing complication, one of the things that fell in the past few months was my creativity.  Original thought (or God prompted thoughts) were what drove me to this blog to get ideas out.  When I look back over the last half of 2008 (and specifically look at where blog posts should be) I realize that creativity gets choked out when the pressure is on.  A lot of things can get choked out when there is high pressure, which brings me to my thought today:

I think adulthood is like a rubber-band.

Playing with a rubber-band is all about tension.  The fun of a rubber-band is managing the tension in your hand.  If you try to use the rubber-band without allowing any tension, it is actually kind of useless.  If you try exerting too much tension and pull too far, it will break.  The usefulness of a rubber-band has to do with its ability to work with tension.

As a person grows up, I think our joy and our work, our fun and productivity (both of which are important) are actually just the managing of tensions all around us.  The life we actually want exists with a push and pull of:

-Wants vs. Needs
-Safety vs. Danger
-Fun vs. Work
-Rest vs. Just a little more
-Hope vs. Reality
-Life vs. Death

The lesson I am learning today (Thanks to Jesus and a good book from a mentor) is that tensions are not problems to be solved.  It is easy for me to feel the tension of the rubber-band and think that I need to do something about it.  There are problems to solve, but there are also tensions to live with…and maybe the life of an adult is learning to manage those tensions well.