Do you ever feel like your life is one big circle? Like life is on repeat -- you deal with the same situations over and over, the same problems and issues and lessons on an almost predictable basis?

Last night I went for a walk and it sort of hit me that this summer has been almost a repeat of the last ten years of my life. As if I've had to deal with things all over again, some of them for the fourth or fifth time? And I'm wondering why. And I'm thinking, "God, didn't I learn from the other times? What else are you trying to teach me?" And I suppose maybe I didn't actually learn the first few times, or else I wouldn't be stuck dealing with them again.

I was listening to a band called Sigur Ros, and they are from {Author's Embarrassing Edit} Iceland {/end Embarrassment}. It's very mellow music, and when they do sing, it's in {Author's Second Embarrassing Edit} Icelandic {/end Embarrassment}. And I was thinking about back in school when I would sit at lunch and listen to a couple of my Korean friends talk to each other in Korean, and how much I used to like it. I don't even know why, really. It was just somehow funny and interesting and fascinating all at the same time. Every once and awhile they'd both look at me and laugh and then go back to talking (at what seemed a mile a minute).

But the thing about language is that it's meaningful. What seems like absolute gibberish to me is actually, in reality, full of understanding, purpose, ideas, thoughts, reason. And yet because I don't understand it I think it's just noise, it's just chaos.

I think God speaks a different language. I think He speaks differently than everyone. I think part of being a Christian is learning to understand that language, being able to converse with God without the barrier of noisy misunderstanding (on our part, of course -- not God's).

I think it gives me some comfort to know that even when I have no idea what God is saying -- when all I hear is chaotic chatter -- I know He's not talking gibberish. I know His words are full of meaning and understanding and reasoning. I know that the communication breaks down on my end, not His.

I guess all I mean is that I need to stop worrying about the lack of understanding and get back to the trusting area. Where I can trust that He's speaking intelligibly, that He knows what's up, that He hasn't just left me in some alien country to hack it on my own.

After I walked a ways, I was sitting on a bench listening to my music, and thinking about all this, and then the song ended and I got up to leave. I sort of turned back because I thought I saw something move. I waited for a second and then the light caught on something and I saw it move again -- and it was a skunk. Not 3 feet from where I was sitting. And I laughed (after I picked up my pace), because who knows what would have happened had I sat for a few minutes longer, and the skunk had gotten closer, and I had startled it. I wonder if life is full of skunks and if we don't move we're gonna get sprayed. And I wonder if God's language might even be in the form of a song coming to an end. Maybe I need to be prepared to hear Him in the most unexpected ways. Maybe that's His language.