This week I've wandered on over (figuratively speaking) to the Slavic side of the language family tree, to Bulgarian. They have a concept called ailyak (though like many other transliterated words from languages that don't use the Latin alphabet, that could be spelled a few different ways).
It's...basically the art of living slow and taking your time. The art of disregarding the pace that other people say you should go at, and doing your own thing, in your own time, in your own way. It's being calm, and methodical, but not unconcerned.
The world we live in...does not encourage doing things slowly. If you don't finish college in four years you must be doing something wrong. If you're not out of your parents' house by a certain age you're doing something wrong. If you don't have an 'adult' enough job by a certain point you're doing something wrong. If you take too long to move at a traffic light you get honked at. If you don't' walk fast enough, if you want to sit and talk for a long time rather than moving on immediately...it just doesn't fit well with the modern world.
But it's ok to take your time. It's ok to...read every single little info plaque in a museum, it's ok to take the scenic route, it's ok to not have things figured out even when you're supposedly too old to not know what you want to do or who you are.
It's ok to take days or weeks or months or years to really think in-depth about the Bible, about faith, about where you stand with God. God is not, I don't think, too terribly concerned with how fast we figure ourselves and our relationship with Them out - or even if we never quite get there. It's all about the journey, taken at our own pace. It's all about doing what is right for us, when it is right for us, and not letting others push us into something we aren't ready for or don't understand quite yet.
God and Jesus meet us where we are, when we need them, always.
