"don't ask yourself what the world needs. ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
my future almost comes alive and lies before me like a book. i am simply amazed and blown away at what God has done for me in the past, in bringing me to the very point that i am at. i am grateful for the joyous triumphs i have shared and seen, and still, the painful falls, my weaknesses exposed, my heart abandoned without reservation, without bounds or safeties. i remember being on a swingset one late night at a church retreat alongside my youth pastor, mike, ready to tell him that i don't think he would have liked me a year earlier - that i had changed that much.
i remember running away from home, holding grudges and rebelling. i remember investing myself into things that let down, things that left me hating myself. i remember feelings of failures and worthlessness, realizations that things weren't the way they should have been, wishing i could breathe when expectations pressed so hard, too hard. i remember feeling so lost, so wretched and incapable, so helpless in this world. i felt like the only one who didn't know what he was doing - and it hasn't been so many hours since the last time i felt like this, i'm sure.
i remember the friends i made. late night talks and worship sessions, the slow development of a new Christian, who began to see what it looks like when what you do and what you believe become the same thing. i remember new hope and stability, new life. a purpose, a meaning for being. it wasn't just a community of people who believed in God...it was to feel, for the first time, favor and pleasure and unparalleled love and kindness that i couldn't shake, i couldn't lose or move away from. it was to hear someone saying, "i see you. i understand you. you're all right, i'm going to take care of you"
i changed so much so fast, and the person you see now is nothing like the person you would have been looking at just a couple of years ago. i can truly say that i make mistakes - even a lot - but it's neither my nature nor what defines me. may i take no confidence in what i have done - good or bad - my worth has nothing to do with how much i've succeeded or screwed up. it has nothing to do with how much of a man i may be or whether others think i can play a piano or whether i am deemed worthy of attention. my value has beautifully nothing to do with me.
my second year at OU, i found a great group of friends. at the peak of it, we would spend at least every night together, hanging out, and it would feel like we could talk forever. i realize that i'm grateful to be at OU, because if i was anywhere else, i wouldn't be doing what i am doing - and i love what i'm doing. when school ended, we threw a big party for everyone, and i had been so stressed, but that night, i couldn't help but think that i was the luckiest guy in the world. i had a ridiculously close group of friends and a beautiful girlfriend, and i knew that i didn't need or deserve any of it, but God was giving me more than i could even ask for. that night, suzi pulled me outside in the rain to tell me how much she had wanted to break up with me, and how, for some reason, none of it mattered anymore.
later, we broke up, and it wasn't so much that we didn't care for one another, just that we thought we should focus on God rather than a relationship, especially if we weren't ready for marriage. i'm not sure what the point of this note was, or if i was simply feeling nostalgic, but the thing is - i just can't wait for what God has in store for me ahead. so much He has already given, and yet i really doubt that He is finished with me yet, and that He will continue to give and lead and hold. i want to say that i really can't get over how great His love is, and how He personally answered Psalm 51 for me.
a week from chaos, everything is as simple as this - God has taken my life and rocked it, transformed it, broken and built it, humbled and moved it. i find that just what King David prays for in Psalm 51 - that is exactly how God has responded to me. "wash me, and i shall be whiter than snow. make me hear joy and gladness, that the bones you have broken may rejoice. hide your face from my sins...create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me..." i find that i have never had so much confidence in myself than before. and i'm not sure why, but i feel more like a man than i ever have before
tonight, i couldn't help but feeling like the luckiest guy in the world again. things with suzi are amazing (i feel so honored to be hers) and i ran a great basketball session with a bunch of my closest guy friends, playing better than i should have played. not even a week from what seemed like rock bottom, God is just so good to me, too good, even. the position that i am in makes no sense. people like me should find themselves buried under the pressures and stresses of making something of their lives, alone and cold because it's so hard to let go of failures and mistakes, hurting and broken because it may be so easy to love and forgive someone else, but it's indefinitely harder to love and forgive yourself.
and yet here i am. complete. satisfied.
moulin rouge said the point of life is to love and be loved. and having tasted real love...isn't this what is so beautiful about life? when you allow yourself to be loved, you will wake up one morning or play basketball with friends one night and realize that you are the luckiest person in the world. and having received that love from God, i don't think we can help but love Him with the same intensity, with unrelenting risk and uncomfortable danger. and to find that in this, we come alive
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