Advancing to glory

"I will not by the noise of bloody wars and the dethroning of kings advance you to glory: but by the gentle ways of peace and love.  As a deep friendship meditates and intends the deepest designs for the advancement of its objects, so doth it shew itself in choosing the sweetest and most delightful methods, whereby not to weary but please the person it desireth to advance...God designing to show you his love in exalting you hath chosen the ways of ease and repose by which you should ascend. And I after his similitude will lead you into paths plain and familiar, where all envy, rapine, bloodshed, complaint, and malice shall be far removed; and nothing appear but contentment and thanksgiving." --Thomas Traherne, Centuries of meditations

I am drowning in daily life. My life is so normal, so unencumbered, that I don't know who I am. I've had a difficult week, but even my difficulties are the trials of normal life. They are the momentary stresses of Wednesday.

Yet they are stifling. I am struggling through things that aren't even trials. I am desperate for tears and weeping, and I have longed for tragedy. At least in tragedy I know myself. There is a clarity that comes with it. When my father left, I knew I was a lost child.  In sickness, I longed for vitality. In the midst of loss, you know what you are missing. 

But today, the trial is absent. There is no singular event that I can define myself by, that dominates my experience. I am rolling in the sun playing with a kitten, and then I am grumbling about my work. I am crying over things that aren't worth crying over, and I have asked for plagues to justify my tears. 

I am asked to live into my future glory self. My true self. The self I will be when Christ returns and calls me home. And right now, God is not sending me a refining fire. He is leading me to quiet pastures. Most of my short life I have felt fires and storms, but this meadow is stiflingly silent. Do I advance to glory even here, in my strange distaste for that which is delightful? Now, Thomas, an old friend, tells me these delightful paths should leave only contentment and thanksgiving.  How may I advance so to glory?

I don't have a final answer, but I take my hint from Thomas and turn to meditation on His word, full of truth and grace.