Restless heart

Daniel F. Gerhartz

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I mumbled. The old familiar feelings had started to lap at the shores of my heart again for the first time in months – the what ifs, the feeling that it was time to move on to something else. The wondering what the grass was like on the other side of the fence.

Time is slipping away, the voice whispered in my ear, as it always does. You’re another year older. Your life’s another year shorter. You’ve been in this place for more than a year now. Are you sure this is really what you want to do for the rest of your life? You could do more. You could have more, be more. What if you’re meant to do something else, and you miss it by being too cautious?

“I don’t get it,” I cried to my mom in frustration. “No matter what I do, I can only stick at it for a few months before I change my mind and want to do something else. Why am I so ADD?”

“You’re not ADD,” my mom replied wisely. “You’re restless. There’s a big difference.”

Restless. In a flash, I knew my mom was right – everything that has ever resonated with me is about freedom, about being brave and strong and unleashed to ride on the wind and soar high above the creeping grasp of everyday life. Consider these songs, some of my favorites:




"Chase the Wind"




"The Eagle and the Hawk"




"I Want to Live"

“I Want to Live”, especially, could be a more eloquent version of a cry from my own heart. I do want to live – I want to see things with my own eyes and experience them for myself. I want to feel racking pain and grief, as well as happiness so huge I could scream. I want to be alone in a big city, on a mountain, in a jungle. I want to be in danger. I want to make hard choices. I want to fly, to run, to leap and soar and dance in the sun.

And that’s why it’s so hard to think about settling into a nice peaceful job as a nice peaceful speech therapist. Or a nice peaceful ENT doctor, if I keep going that route. That was my last restless decision. Right now I want to be a pharmacist, but that doesn’t quite feel right either. No matter what I do, I have never yet experienced that “click” – that feeling of, yes, this is where I’m meant to be. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

And that restlessness and fear of settling down is also why the thought of getting married is so frightening to me – the older I get, the less willing I am to trust my heart and life into the hands of another person, especially since marriage is permanent. How can I agree to love and submit to one man forever, when I can’t even stick to a college major for more than a couple of years? What if I never experience the “click” with a man, either, and have to wing it based on my feeble powers of commitment?

Finally comes the question of whether being restless is even right. Christ Himself said He “set His face like a flint.” There was no flightiness or capriciousness about Him – everything He did was with His ultimate purpose in mind, and everything He did led to that goal. I don’t even have a goal, let alone wholeheartedly pursue it. Am I wrong? I excuse so many sins under the guise of “well, I’m just made that way.” Is this another one?

I don’t know. All I do know is that I’m living in a dream, only staying in reality long enough to finish what I have to do before I can escape into my dream world again with Spock, Captain America, Sydney Carton, Jane Eyre, and Princess Leia. Because there, I am free and strong and brave. There, I can do the things I dream, with the people I dream of; and the dream can change every day if I want it to. But this isn't how I want to live.

I hope that someday I find a reality that is exciting enough to pull me into it and let me truly begin to write my own story for the first time.