humility

how much lifestyle change is going to be required of me? I tearfully put myself to bed last night crying out-- can I do this? Have I made the greatest mistake of my life? Is this what I want? What do I even want? I find myself in a place in life that I don't think I even had time to imagine for myself. What is tomorrow and the everydays after that going to look like?

I live 0.6 miles from Pearl Street. I share an apartment with three people that I hardly know and we are all struggling against the confines of the walls that seem to be closer together than we allowed imagination. I find myself wondering if I am sacrificing all rights to my own domestic whims, putting the placemats and hand towels back in boxes and wondering where I can leave them until I decide what I want out of life-- where I want to settle. Thrift store placemats and and hand-me-down handtowels that once seemed barely enough now feel like luxuries not to be afforded. Compromises for the sake of hurt feelings and a love of natural wood table tops. I find the way of life that has proceeded this to be too large for this small living space. And I wonder what sort of refining process is ahead, wanting not to move again, but unable to pare down everything to one small carload.

I've had a lot of seasons in my short life. the last few years have felt like a large collection of small places, transitions, big movements, big questions. There have been a lot of forced opportunities for starting over. This do-over, however, feels quite different. I find myself in a vast stretch of opportunity for growth and change unlike any other. The distance is larger, the risk is greater, and the payments are higher. I find myself on the brink and yet find myself feeling quite young. Inexperienced. I am daily reminded of my inability to go it alone and each moment find myself whipering prayers for the grace badly needed but out of my own ability to pay back.

Last night, as I navigated the maze of boxes and homeless furniture, I wondered if there can be a limit to the grace of the Father. This week, I've thought often about the quote printed at the top of this very page: "If we are to keep growing, we must risk failure throughout our lives." I've been confronted with the question of whether or not there is any risk we can take that results in a failure too great for the love and redeeming hand of the father. Does he make a way for difficult relationships, for cooperation between selfish people, for rent that is higher than I ever thought I would ever pay, does he make a way to move more often than any person should try to do when they are painters and teachers and find comfort in the stuff that fills thier ever-changing homes? Does he make a way for the things left undone in the midst of my overwhelm over work and time and the damn heat of the summer. Does his forgiveness make a way for him to bail me out when I repeatedly bite off more than he created me to chew? Is there a place when he simply steps back and says, "sorry, this is the sixth time you've had a chance to learn your lesson and I think it's time you suffered a bit more for succumbing to the ways of your over-product-zealous society. I warned you."

But then I suppose he gave the Isrealites 40 years. He knew it would take them this long to shed the slavery within thier hearts. And although it felt like a punishment to these wayward people, it was simply his way of preparing them for the promise of freedom. It takes time. He seems to be eternally patient with our failings. And I suppose the greater the risk that we allow, the greater our understanding of just how big God is. As we grow, we choose ever higher steps to jump from, testing the true strength of his outstretched arms.

Yesterday I drove down through the country to my new school. I am overwhelmed. I was so confident until I actually tried writing down some thoughts about what I was actually going to do. And I sat there across from my mentor teacher feeling very small, very young. I humbly sat across the table feeling somewhat like one of her high school students as she patiently walked me through what I needed to do. And I humbly sat there thinking about how she had introduced me to other teachers on a first-name basis, realizing that these people were now my peers and collegues.

In many ways, I feel myself stradling two worlds, two selves. I am teacher and I am student. I feel prepared, my arm is heavy from a full toolbox of resources, but I am overwhelmed by it. How do I sort it all out in such a way that I know how to speak to students in a way that communicates how important they are while also creating the structure that my authoriative role requires. How do I maintain an honesty with myself about what I really am capable of doing while finding the humility to simply cry out for help. It is, I think, one of life's greatest challenges to find the ability to simply be broken without allowing the possibility of another person's distain to infringe upon the truth of my own worth. And yet, this brokenness is just the honesty that we need for essential growth.

So here I am. Sitting in what I think is going to be one of my favorite spots for thinking, lesson planning, and drinking coffee and struggling against the thought that somehow I am unworthy of this thing I've chosen. I'm fighting the voice that is constantly telling me that it is all too difficult, the voice saying that grace is going to run out too quickly, the voice telling me that my mistakes are too great for the lovend forgiveness of my eternal Father. I'm fighting the voice saying that I ought to be ashamed of my accumulation of earthly possessions, fighting the voice tempting me to despair about the things that are much too unkown. And I'm straining to hear the voice of Truth reminding that he meets us where we are.


HE MEETS US WHERE WE ARE. So here I am. Small and humbled, waiting to see the growth that awaits in this mess of life.

I've been pondering... I realize I begin nearly every post with the words, "I've been thinking," and I also realize that at this point that declaration/explanation is probably irrelevant, but nevertheless, I find it an important opening. the things that I mull over are often the things that ooze out here-- it is like when the cylces of my life finally reach the point where they materialize into words, they emerge here on this black canvas.

So, I've been thinking... I've been thinking about this group of people that I seem to have stumbled upon through a certain roommate and how the ritual of a weekly game of bowling seems more like church and more fulfilling that anything that I have ever experienced. I think about the relationships that I have at home, the people around me in Colorado that feel like feeble shells of relationships. I hope for any of you who read this that you do not misunderstand me-- I have very very dear friendships at home, but I often feel like they are on the verge of collapse and hard as I try, a phone call back is a miracle in its own right, let alone seeing them face to face.

And so I sit there in the alcoholic, smoke-filled bowling alley surrounded by all sorts of people, some that I have had great, wonderfully deep conversations with, others who I've just met and simply are hurting for a few other faces to look into thier own. And I feel a strength, a satisfaction that I have always longed for and never really had the opportunity to feel between my weary fingers. Friendship. Comradery. And it feels so very good. I feel like there is no adgenda, nothing to earn or prove. No stigma. I'm just twenty and somehow got introduced to one person. And here I am, embraced in this community full of laughter and love and joy and pain and sorrow. Its like everyone just has this deep sense that we need to be together becuase we are human, so we are.

And so I've been trying to sort out why everything felt so barren at home. Why are my few feeble relationships so, well, feeble? Why does it feel impossible to see the people that I love? Why is it so hard for me to meet people in classes at church and work when these ought to be the things that hold us together-- something in common. And I wonder if something in me has changed. Or if it is the landscape that has changed. Or the people are different. older, maybe. And I wonder if it is just a matter of breaking into that one community, that one group of people that you seem to just fall into and they are lucky to be people of embrace. I don't know.

But I do know this-- something feels good. It feels easy. Not easy like we can superficially skate over our faults to be okay with each other, but real ease. Relationships that flow like a river. People with real lives and real hurts and real struggles. People who are looking for jobs, and people who have great ones. People who love to paint and take pictures and people who love to read and people who just do what they can to get by. People who have moved here from barren deserts and people who have come seeking wildernesses. People who are in the midst of their own rivers, navigating what they really want to do with thier bodies and days and souls. Everyone asking questions and just asking that someone ask the questions too.
Why did it feel so barren at home? Why?

And so again, I ask, was it something in me? Or was it the people there? Is it the people here? Or has Abba simply been gracious enough to me to allow me to fall into the soft arms of this strange, undulating community?

So I officially did not get the job with Starbucks. But these past few days I've processed a lot about what I want, what I am seeking and more than anything I keep coming back to this desire simply to touch people in their everyday lives. This sense of breathing in real life, listening to people talk about what they had for breakfast and feeding the dog, and walking to school, and bagging groceries at work, and in the middle of that seeing how the light of God is shining bright and breezily through the cracks. I've been thinking about why it has been so hard for me to look for a job becuase I don't know what I want and I think tonight I reached a little more of a conclusion: there is this tension between seeking "grownup" jobs like teaching and office work that is going to look good on a resume someday, a sense of preparing for the future, and seeking a job that really just allows me to listen to people. To say, "Hi. How can I help you? How is your day?" Some place that I can look the mom of four in the eye and say, "I hope your load is light today." A smile. Breathing easy.

And so then my next question is, if this is a righteous desire, if this breathing that I feel about working as a Barista or cashier or whatever, if all of this is from the True heart of God, why has he waited so long to provide? Or is it just me? Or is it becuase I have not yet discovered the craft of concealing the length of time I am here for. I do not understand.

And I suppose that this sort of breathing into another's real day can be done anywhere, whether it be the child inthe class that I substitute teach for or across the counter at the coffee shop, but why is my heart so drawn to the other? abba, what do you have in mind to provide. Why can't I see it? Or am I ignorinig the real call on my heart?

Tonight at Community Group we had an excellent conversation about seeking to serve people in thier everyday lives and I was impressed again with the need to listen. The need to breathe in God's voice when he whispers. And I've been thinking about how today I woke up with no idea what my adgenda was going to be. The only engagement lined up for the day was a ten-minute meeting for a class that I don't care about that will have no future record. And I realized tonight that this strange time of quiet in my life is this marvelous opportunity simply to wait on God minute by minute, to seek his voice for what he would have me to do in each breath. And I think to seek this type of attitude in life is one of the hardest, most illusive ways to live and yet, I feel like it would be the most fulfilling, most connected ways to live. Really listening to the spirit and leading of the Creator. How that sort of breath would fill our lungs! FUll full full. Like a spring rain, a long drink of water, a fullness of lung.

How I long for it, but how I fear it. I fear the lack of control. I fear the day the bottom falls out and I'm found with my pants down. You know? I think our impluse is to want to have a plan-- I want to find security in my school schedule, my work schedule, the tick tick tick of the years as they go by, graudation after graduation after promotion after retirement.

I suppose I came here to learn this rhythm of life, this sort of life that is less dependent upon the security I seek in my packed schedule. I came here to become less dependent upon my ability to plan things out. I came here to release control of my own time, to freefall into the arms of the one who is really capable of holding me (even though it feels a lot more like I would do a better job). And so suddenly, in the midst of my typing, I am longing to jump out of the plane. I suddenly want out of control. I long for the exhilarating breath of trust as the air rushes past past past my rosy cheeks.

I realize these past weeks I have been frantically struggling. STruggling against it all. Instead of just letting the air of freedom from schedule rush past and fill my lungs, I tightened. Stopped breathing altogether. And I think of the words that entered my mind as I left the grocery store the other day, simply, "when are you going to stop feeling sorry for yourself in this tightness and trust me?" This sense of neeing to stop pinching pennies and throw it all into the wind, trusting that at the right moment what I need will be in abundant supply. But I suppose I cannot seek God to provide for tomorrow if I am not accepting what he has provided for today.

So, I would ask all of you to pray for me in this. Hold me up. I am realizing more and more that I don't really want to seek a hard life alone. I think for a long time my mentality and goal has been to seek challenge, to seek that which is hard and unsafe becuase this is the real way to live. But I have always had a sense that something in that was missing becuase I wasn't breathing. And I am seeing that I need people journeying with me. I think of myself carrying this burden for the sake of building great muscles, but I think there are a few passages about giving up the burden, allowing others to lend their muscles to uphold it as well. So I am asking you all, my dear friends, my various faces of family, please journey with me. Hold me up. Let me ramble in my stupidity until I figure out the complicated mess. Pray that breath would fill my lungs to keep going.