An Existentialist Surrenders

I remember being about 7 years old, dressed in a pink tutu with braids in my hair, and proudly declaring to my mother that I had made an important decision: I realized that I wanted to be a "princess" when I grew up. Then I humbly asked for my mother's advice on how should I go about to doing this.

My mother smiled, bent down to me and said I would have to marry a prince in order to be a princess, but the good news was that there is a prince my age named William who lives in England.

Well, I thought this was unfair. At the time, ew, boys still had cooties! But eventually, several Disney movies later, I fell in love with the dream of marrying a prince.

My memory of this story surfaced this past week when I read the announcement: http://abcnews.go.com/International/prince-william-kate-middleton-engagment/story?id=12158508

I've just hit my month four mark here in the city, and the finality of my decision to move to San Francisco is starting to sink in. This is my home. This is my city. This is my work. This is my calling.

This is my life.

I am here in San Francisco as a 28 year old, single woman who is a counselor for a church. Life doesn't look like what I had dreamt, the vision of an extravagant destiny that I had pictured as a little girl.

How many paths have I pondered and pursued throughout my life? Princess of England, elementary school teacher, wife, mother, Hollywood actress, cake baker, ballerina, Olympic gymnast, action movie star, novel writer, fashion designer, crime scene investigator, punk rocker, music video director to name only a few.

For creative beings like you and me, surrendering our dreams is hard to do. Not because life as it is isn't wonderful or beautiful, but because it is unexpected. It is sometimes disorienting. Life as it is can never look like the one that we have tried in vain for years to construct. How can it?

Does God's sovereign hand or do our own personal strivings determine the outcome of our lives? (Or, perhaps, you are more comfortable with the idea of Fate versus choice.) There is a reality that I can choose some things. There is also a reality that I cannot control most circumstances, I cannot control people's choices or the bus arriving on time or the rainclouds rolling in on the horizon or the color of my eyes.

So the life that I am living is both mine and not mine. Mine by choice and not mine by the choices that I cannot make, those which are not under my jurisdiction.

I must surrender my own creation to the greater Creator.

I used to tell people that I wish I could meet with God at Starbucks once a week to review his upcoming plans for my life. Not so much in order to micromanage his decisions, but to be a part of the brainstorming process. Oh, yeah. And to have veto power.

Will life be beautiful or tragic?

I have a choice to either sit here on my bed, dwelling on my own dream, my own art, my own creation, the idyllic world that exists in my head.

Or, I can choose to surrender, turn my head to the left and drink in the gorgeous creation that is right outside of my three paneled window overlooking a sunny North Beach street bustling with tourists and Italians. The bells of St. Peter and Paul's church have just chimed 4 o'clock and now I will hop in the shower, put on some red lipstick and hurry off to meet a group of new friends at a cafe in the Mission for dinner and cocktails.

Where, o where will the tale of life in San Francisco lead?...