If you are ever looking for someone who understands change and transition you should immediately contact anyone in their mid twenties or anyone that has just graduated from college. The past 6 months of my life have been a rampant lesson in change, patience and attempting to understand how exactly God will gloriously mess up my life. I guess I do not have much for him to mess up at the moment because I am still perpetually living in transition.
Ever since I graduated school I have had these certain ideas for where I would land this year, what I would be doing, how exactly I would set up my office (I was thinking of a lavender color) when I eventually got hired at the church I would be serving for the next 20 years of my life. How I would find the woman that God has laid in store for me once I got there, and how eventually I would live happily ever after with my lady, our 2.4 kids and my dog "Rowdy." I have come to think that all of that was just a romantic notion on the view of success that has been drilled into my skull throught he Sat. morning cartoons I watched when I was little to the football games that I watch now. It is interesting that the people we are told we need to admire are those who have successfully achieved the American dream. As a matter of fact I have and still do at times hinge where I am going in the future to where I am at that very moment (penniless, post college 20 something, scrapping by month to month, still living with his parents and hanging out with the same 3 friends that I have had for the past 4 or 5 years) and I realize I am no where near ready to take the next step in my life, even if I knew what that was.
This is a trend that I have been trying to break as I realized the other day while watching football of all things, that there are people out there that are feeling the exact same way I am at this moment. Those that depended on school so much for an avenue of interaction and comfortable stretching of our boundaries are finding it hard to find that next big goal to reach for. We always had that big test or paper to prepare for, but now it seems as if there is no summit that has to be reached, no tough, busy task to be graded on. All that there seems to be is the abyss that is the rest of my life. I suppose the fear is that you have no idea where that is going to go. Which is interesting because having no idea or remote possibility for where I would land in the future is what excited me most about being called into ministry. I suppose I just did not expect that this glorious romantic mission of my calling would involve me first working a job cutting grass, and then pulling graphics off a line and now finally working as a substitute teacher (which is actually something I had thought would be cool to do for a year before I started my sr. year, the sub part not graphic pulling). I guess the really scary thing now is that where I, we go from here is no longer up to the powers that be, but is up to us discerning God's call and removing our own personal glory so that we may seek His and His alone.
I don't know what opportunities will arise and I am literally on the edge of my seat waiting for that next big dip to happen within this roller coaster ride I am currently on which has had so many twist and turns in this half year that I think I have nothing left in my stomach to upchuck. All I can do is live out my calling the best way I know how and that is to be a "lover of people" as Shane Claiborne says.
Remember, the Abyss is just that an abyss, enjoy your trip through it.
Cj-out
