blessed is this life & I'm going to celebrate being alive

Sometimes I see jobs that I never, ever want to have, and I start thinking about how horrible it would be if I was forced to have them, if I didn't have a choice. Yesterday I was looking at the fashion section in the Wall Street Journal and I started to panic, because what if I was forced to be a super model on the runway? What if I was forced to wear makeup on my eyes like scary space raccoons, grease my hair onto my head like a skullcap of snot, and wear a swarm of fake butterflies around my head to complement the runway's "nature" motif? Then, when I saw these shoes, I started to hyperventilate:

"Help us! We are trapped in giant mole heads!" - Feet

I had to close the newspaper and watch the Weather Channel to get my mind on something else. I would never, ever want to be a runway model. I like my hip bones softly enfolded in revolt of the vegan lifestyle, and not protruding from my body like permanent javelins.

I had a what-if-I-had-to-have-that-job panic attack a few days ago, too, when I starting thinking, What if I had to work in a daycare for the rest of my life? I have loved a few small children in my life, this being one of them:

"William, can you do Down Dog?"

But in mass numbers, little tots are not my favorite thing. People like to tell me, "It's different when you have your own." After watching several episodes of SuperNanny, however, the only difference I see is that, when it's your own kid, you're allowed to lock him in the basement after he's colored on the walls with a permanent marker because you told him he couldn't have more animal crackers, whereas if you were just the daycare provider, you'd get fired & sued. (Note: Locking in basement has never been a Super Nanny approach. I myself do not recommend this approach on a human, but it works very well with demon cats.)

I have actually been thinking a lot of jobs recently. I've been thinking about the talents and gifts God has given us, and the ones He hasn't. One of the RDs at Asbury spoke this in chapel a couple of years ago:

Don't you know that I have made you in my image? Anytime you degrade yourself, you degrade me. Anytime you deny or misuse the gifts that I have given you, you are no better than the one who hid his talent in the ground and waited for the master's return. Will I not bestow on you the same fate as him? Why do you compare yourself to others upon whom I have given other talents? Don't you know that all that I have is yours if you will just open your hands, heart, mind, and soul to receive them? When you hide the ways I bless you, you fail to expose me. No amount of false humility or religious jargon will hide these facts from me. You honor me by living life to its fullest. You honor me by speaking truth about how I have kept you. You honor me by being who I have created you to be, and I called you to be you, not [anyone else]. It doesn't matter how much you have felt you messed up things or failed in the past. You fail to humble yourself when you refuse to acknowledge how I have redeemed you. You refuse to be humble when you meditate on your insufficiency, and not on me.

I have learned this, and it has made all the difference. For the longest time I thought I had to try to be someone who would please the Lord, to change myself into someone who could be a servant of the Lord. But now I see He is most pleased when I live in the fullness of all He has created me to be, and I serve Him best when I use the very talents He has given me.

This week I am getting ready to begin a new job at one of my favorite places on earth. I feel incredibly blessed and humbled to be a part of the VCC team. And I am thankful that, when we give everything to the Lord in surrender, He gives right back to us even better.

"This morning was...great. We went to the Vineyard again, and for the first time I lost self-consciousness and felt longing to reach God. See, the sermon explained Jesus' purpose and what he did in a better way than I've ever heard, and when we began to sing "Jesus Paid it All" I felt engulfed in praise to Jesus....Wow. I simply walk into the sanctuary and I feel the presence of the Lord. I don't know if it's I who's changed...or is it the church? But Jesus seems so much more real...alive...close." - journal entry from Sunday, December 2, 2007

And 3 1/2 years later, I get to work there. :)

Vinefest, 2008

what's in an adventure?

A trip by any other name might sound as sweet....but won't be.

I was thinking about adventures this morning as I sat with God at my college roommates' kitchen table. (I can say things like this now, because we have graduated from college, and they're no longer my roommates. Don't I sound adult?) I had just eaten a peanut butter granola bar for breakfast (thanks, former college roomies) and was waiting for God to say something. He sat there, verbally silent, but looking at me with that look on His face like, "You already know what I'm going to say, so I'm just going to raise one eyebrow at you and wait until you sigh resignedly and write it in your journal." You can tell God and I have this "conversation" a lot.

I've been on a few adventures. Enough, anyway, that I've begun to realize what classifies an experience as an adventure. Is it the circumstances? The destination? The people?

I think the only thing that determines what is an adventure and what isn't, is the attitude of the adventurer. Some qualities of an adventurous attitude:

willingness
flexibility
determination
whatever characteristic ducks have when water rolls of their backs
laid-backedness
joy
optimism
chocolate covered raisins

An experience without those things is just something to trudge through, withstand, or tolerate. Experiences with those things are pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. You come out of adventures with nuggets - and scars - that you'll take with you for the rest of your life, changing you and shaping you.

I can't say, like Johnny Cash, that I've been everywhere, man. But where I go doesn't determine my adventure. My cousin Christine, married and with two kids, told me yesterday that she envied my situation. I can go wherever and do whatever, for however long, with whomever. It makes me want to pack all my stuff and move to Wyoming or Maine or Canada, since they have free health care.

But this is where God's knowing expression comes in. And I sigh and write in my journal, because I realize why I'm depressed as I think about the un-stability of my life instead of being excited about its adventure. I answer people's questions with, "I have no idea what I'm doing with my life." And therein lies the splinter in my finger, the gaping gorge I'm balancing precariously on the side of and ready to plunge into at the slightest tremor:

It isn't my life.

I realized that for the past 6 months I've been trying to find a vocation that I'd enjoy but would still be serving God. I'm good at that, AND God's involved! I can go there, AND be with my friends AND serve God! But I have it backwards. If my hands are too full of my life, I can't hold onto His robe. If my ears are too full of my own plans, I can't hear His voice calling to me. I need to surrender my plans, my desires, my will, and then the REAL adventure can begin.

He called Andrew to leave his nets.

He called Peter to walk on water.

Talk about adventure!

Bilbo said it best when he said in The Hobbit that adventures are not all pony-rides in May sunshine. And, as my 12-year-old camper from Africa sang in the sweetest voice I've ever heard, it's not going to be easy to leave. But I feel like Moses in Exodus 33, when he tells the Lord, "If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us from here." I'm banking on the Lord's answer here being His same promise to me:

"My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest."

oh, for grace to trust you more

My mom often tells me how very "strong willed" I was as a child. I also got 10 times as many spankings as my brothers. (Once I told my oldest brother to "go to hell" while we built a dam in the creek behind our house. He thought it was funny and couldn't wait to tell my mom. (I confessed before he had the chance to revel in tattling and was punished by doing his share of unloading the dishwasher for a week.))

When I was about six years old, I got a dress that I would probably think was hideous now, but that I adored at the time. It had a black satin slip underneath a sheer, long-sleeved cover with red and rust-colored flowers on it. Um, how does that even sound appealing at all? Except for the fact that it swooshed when I walked.

The only problem was, it was a little too big for me. My mom wouldn't let me wear it to church, and I was angry. I remember putting it on and sitting at the little plastic Play Mate table in my room, in the dark, being angry. Brooding. Wishing I had my way. Wanting something I couldn't have. And all because my will wasn't my own, but my mother's. Not fair.

Today I was thinking about the similarities between my childhood relationship with my mother, and my relationship now with my Lord. The difference now is that I choose to surrender my will to replace it with God's, because He knows when the dress is too big for me to wear (so to speak). But I laughed somewhat pitifully at myself today as I realized how often, in my attitude, I sit at my Play Mate table in the dark, being angry because I'm not getting my way. I realized that here I've been praying "I want what You want," all the while hoping that He wants what I want. It doesn't work that way. The followers who tried to mix their own wills with Jesus' were the ones He told to go away and rethink their devotion. The followers who left their everything to follow Him became His disciples.

What would it be like to be completely and wholly surrendered to the Lord, mind, body, and spirit?

"Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground." - Psalm 143:10