Thursday, May 10, 2007

Jumbled

Have you ever attempted to write something that has no meaning to you? It's horrendous. Have you ever attempted to write something that has no meaning to you when your head is filled with things that tear your heart out? It's nigh impossible. I have spent today attempting to give my thoughts a path to drive down, and they decided to go four by fouring.

Not the Cherokee, this is sort of a gravel road kind of offroading either. We're talking through fields that are layered in feet of mud, rocks nearly as big as the car, and tree trunks that have never seen man before. They wander free over the landscape that is my life, and dare me to tame them.

Lack of work, lack of direction, lack of security, indecision, uncertainty, and doubts fill my mind. They tear at me, begging me to lay down. They laugh as they push me round, biting and scraping at me until I fall. But I cannot, I will not give them my will. Remember, we were all bought at a price.

One moment, it seems like I have everything sorted out, and five minutes later the framework has crumbled before me. I'm left back where I started, attempting to piece things together. But it is amazing how a simple conversation can help you sort things through. Amazingly, verbalizing your discombobulation snaps it into order. The reality is that this life is not my own.

So I broke up with Jordan. Someone who I loved, and continue to love right now. That is, by far, the hardest decision I have had to make yet in my young life. Did I have good reasons? I sure hope so. Do they feel like they are enough? Never. But as I talked with someone this evening, the reason why became bright and clear once more, we're at different places in life.

Have you ever tried to drive a standard that's clutch is going? Either you engage the clutch, give it some gas, and it slips out of gear, or you go to put it into gear, and the gears clash, grind and make everyone in the car wince. There is no proper way to drive a car like that, you have to take it into the mechanics to get it fixed, and quickly. If the clutch and the gears aren't in sync, then you go nowhere.

So I don't have a job, and there are no real tantalizing prospects. I don't have an infinite source of funds, and I am looking to God to provide me with passion. And so far, I've drawn blanks. Sure, there are some ok jobs that may come through, but somehow, I just don't find myself energized, I find myself stressed out. So we go back to the topic of peace. Peace is knowing that when everything is falling apart around you, God is in control. And He reminds me of that daily, hourly, sometimes by the minute.

Who needs money anyways?

Lord I give You my heart
I give You my soul
I live for You alone
Every breath that I take
Every moment I'm awake
Lord have Your way in me

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

The Breaking Point

I have a confession to make. It may not seem like a big deal once you really find out what it is, but to me, it's absolutely monumental. You see, I don't know about you, but I spend a lot of time adjusting how people think about me. Perhaps one person is too close, so I pull away just a little bit, or maybe I want them to pull away, so I'll adjust my behaviour. Or maybe I notice that I said something really awkward the last time I was with a group of people, so this time I'll keep my mouth shut, and laugh at all the right times, so they think better of me.

You see, I live a lie. I really wish it wasn't this way, and I have a feeling I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to correct it. I can put all the Jesus mumbo jumbo on it I want to try to justify it or cover it up, but the reality of the situation is that I'm not good enough. I'm deprived, I'm sick, and whether God sees me as perfect or not, I still struggle with the fact that I'm not.

The past month or so has been spent praying. Praying about what is going on, praying for answers, praying for relief, praying for this, or that. Honestly, if you listened to my prayers, you'd think that God was a supermarket, and everything was on sale. "Moaning Young Adult on Isle 3, Cleanup on Isle 3 please!" Supermarkets are great. You go in, you take your cart, you browse a little, take a guilty pleasure stroll down the candy isle, and you leave your money and take everything home.

God is not a supermarket.

No, God is more like going home for the holidays. You show up, you greet everyone, you are amazed at how they look, once you get past the small talk, you start telling them how you're really doing, and then you want their advice. You want to feel loved. This is the one place where the people know you so well, that it doesn't make sense to lie. They saw you naked, and they still love you. They heard your voice squeak, and they only made fun of you for a few years. They were at your soccer games. You don't take what you want from them... you give back too. To talk to God requires conversation.

I'm scared, there's no point in denying it. Everything in my life is in upheaval. Perhaps it's because I've been depending on my old friend, me. Me has all the skills he needs to survive. Me knows what is best. Me can get everything and anything done just when it needs to be done. Me needs to be taken out back and shot.

Enough of Me. I'm sick of me. More of You. Let it all be You.

I've tried to do it on my own. It never works. Let it be a stake in the ground. Here is where I pick up my rusty armour, don my unused sword and begin that journey back Home once more. God willing, I'll see you there.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

No One Said it Wasn't Going to Hurt

Deuteronomy 31:8

The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never
leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.

Jesus never promised to make us happy. He never promised that the path would be smooth, paved and free of potholes... in fact, he promised just the opposite. Have you ever stopped to think about how idiotic that is? This is God incarnate, wanting to establish a new way of interacting with the beings He created, and He tells them that their life will be hell if they decide to follow him. They will be tortured, made fun of, spat at, hated, all because they believe in Him. Who in their right mind would ever do that?

Worse yet, there are times when He, like any good parent, asks us to do things that suck. The plain old, bottom lip out, arms crossed and stomping across the room on my heels as hard as I can, are you looking at me, kind of way.

The difference is, He's not asking us to do the dishes. He's asking for absolute trust.

Have you ever participated in those trust exercises? You know the ones... before a support group starts, there has to be a common trust between everyone, so they put you all through ridiculous exercises like training dogs. You fall backwards into other people's arms. You go through fake-stressful situations so that you learn to 'bond' and 'trust' one another. Do you get the same feeling I do? These don't actually build trust, but merely facilitate you realizing the inevitable: that person you're catching would KILL you if you didn't catch them.

That's not trust. That's duty.

God doesn't need us. He doesn't require our worship to exist. The guy doesn't even sleep, because He created the sun and the moon. He doesn't need us to trust Him.

But we need to trust in Him.

It's a terrible human paradox. We need to be needed, and this is one situation where we definitely are not needed.

I have to learn to trust all over again. I have walked this path so many times before, and each time I look down, it seems like I'm treading the same territory one more time. You know what I've realized? This is not the same turf, but it is the same lesson. You take math for twelve years in school, and each time the grade you're taking builds off of the previous one. My faith is something like that.

It doesn't make it any easier.

I'll be completely honest with you, I'm hurting. More than I can really put into words or express in a tangible way. Father, you are taking me down a path I am unsure of. I feel as though there is a knife in my side, yet knowing full well that this is what you want for me. It gives me a strange peace in this storm.

Trust. I have confidence in what God is doing.

God never said this journey wasn't going to hurt. He promised me that it would hurt me, rob me of my innocence and rose coloured glasses. I didn't expect it to cost so many lives, literally an emotionally. I didn't realize that I would so often feel numb inside, and feel like quitting. I didn't know that I would stand at the front of the battle lines, heaving and thrusting, over and over until my muscles burn and threaten to buckle under the strain. I didn't know that it would rip my heart from my chest so that others could grow. That I would give up everything and everyone I love in a pursuit of something greater.

This hurts like hell. And the frightening thing is, it's all worth it.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Why I Hate Fixing Cars

It's funny how many people have been commenting on how 'handy' I must be with cars recently because of some of the work that I and Paul, my brother, are planning on doing. Keep that last part in mind, because it's very important. On my old Jetta, we replaced the glow plugs, replaced the cold-start cable and a few other various things. On the Golf (hereafter affectionately referred to as 'Jade'), we haven't done a whole lot together, but that won't stop the future fixing that problem. We plan on dropping the transmission out of her, new wheels, bigger turbo, etc etc. Basically, Jade is going to be one mean lady by the time we're done.

Did I mention that I hate working on cars?

The don't make an ounce of sense to me. If I sit down with a computer, I know that I can always fix whatever problem I might accidentally create. Google is my best friend, and there are no depths that I am not willing to poke. Because I know that I can always dig myself out of any cave in my actions might create. I don't have that feeling with vehicles.

I went yesterday to change the oil. Nothing hard, pop off the engine cover, drain the oil, replace the filter, the oil plug and then refill. It's not rocket science. But we have to get that engine cover off.

The beautiful thing is that all of the bolts holding the engine cover were stripped or broken. Probably by some naive action I had performed in the past. What should have been a 30 minute maintenance took myself and my father nearly 4 hours and a trip to Canadian tire to fix. We ended up having to drill off the bolts so that we could get the cover off.

Then, with my confidence shot, we had to change the oil. Nothing big, but who knows what I can screw up on a routine job.

If only cars had a format option to put them back to factory settings.