Apparently the last time I posted (yesterday) my post got deleted due to some website problems. So to attempt to re-post...
To give you a quick update, church is going well. God is bringing specific families and individuals to our church each week that need to hear from Him and it has been so encouraging to see His hand working! My job is tiring, but going well. If you all could pray for strength and patience with the kids I work with, that would be so appreciated. Some days are wonderful with them and some days are very trying. Also if you could pray for continued guidance with C3; that we would continue to seek Him in all we do. It seems He is raising up multiple people who are seriously praying about moving out here, or who are already here, that feel called to help us with C3. Please pray God would continue to stir up and piece together what He will and that His will would be done.
I just found this on my computer the other day and felt called to share it with you all. I think I shared part of it with a group of friends at APU. I wrote it a couple months before I graduated; for no particular reason other, it just flowed out of me and my struggles. Though I am in quite a different place now then I was a year ago when I wrote this, I am still struggling with thoughts of the future and desires to know where the Lord is leading me day by day. May this encourage you and may God speak to you today.
I'm sorry it's so long. love you all.
3-2-2010
There are some days, where I just feel tired. Tired of my race horse of a mind never ceasing to sprint. Tired of the world around me consistently revealing new depths to its brokenness. Tired of my persistent confusion in trying to figure everything out and make sense of the mess that is our society. Tired of feeling forced to plan a future I can in no way predict. So tired, I have no room in the rest of me to feel anything else. Today is one of those days.
So much pressure is put on privileged, American twentysomethings about to graduate from college and move on to a new direction in their lives. Hell, so much pressure is put on three-year-olds to learn to read so they can achieve the Ivy league someday. Both of those statements could be combated with many other more legitimate burdens that are felt around our nation and the world, no doubt in much higher degrees of severity. I’m not trying to invalidate those burdens in the least; I am merely trying to validate another. There is something uniquely suffocating about the pressure facing a twentysomething about to face college graduation, particularly twentysomethings who are wrestling with God and His Truth and how His calling of His followers aligns, or doesn’t align, with the life after graduation we are told to plan.
On the one hand, we want to please those we hold respect for around us: professors, relatives, parents, friends, hopefully just people. We want to prove to these people that our life that has been so richly blessed by the generosity and pouring out of others around us is not leading to a dead end. A plan is expected of us, thus we feel obligated to provide one. To prevent worry. To prevent more questions. To give an acceptable answer to the questions. This need to please results in this rush to plan out our next steps and next moves two months from now, even when we can’t see past the next thirty seconds.
On the other hand, we want to follow the passions inside of us. The ones telling us to live and love and laugh. The ones that call us to travel and explore; go on adventures and fly. The ones that maybe we suppressed for so long that we can barely hear their pulse, but yet they beat and that beat is undeniable.
On some proverbial third hand, we are scared out of our stylish and unnecessary shoes that if we don’t have security or at least some path to follow, the world outside of this collegiate bubble will eat us alive; scarf us down in one bite and swallow us whole. We are taught it is shameful, unacceptable and ultimately a disgrace to not chase security and safety, as our society defines it, and we are fools to do so. Passions are pressed further down and even more so Truth is compromised for this very chase.
On top of all of this, perhaps on our shoulders or more appropriately on our hearts, we are trying to follow God. A God, the God, who doesn’t fit into the arguments and pressures put on us. God who calls to serve, love and spread Truth. God who doesn’t fit into a growth plan or job search or grad school application. God who is so much greater than petty decisions we sometimes must or are pressured into thinking we have to make. God whose only Son lived with the dirtiest scum of the earth, calling them the most worthy of blessing and love. God who calls us to walk in His Son’s footsteps. God who calls us to spread the knowledge of His glory throughout the earth. God who calls us to seek Him. Period.
With all of this, on our minds and hearts…everyday…every hour…every second, no one could deny the fact that we are tired. Tired and stressed and overcaffeinated and trying desperately not to give up. But in some moments, we must just sit back and embrace the fact that we are tired. Let the exhaustion sweep over and consume us; rest in the dilapidated souls that we are and bask in the warmth of that acceptance.
The most beautiful, incredible, and utterly ridiculous part of this state of tiredness is that we can get up and move on with unshakable, untouchable hope and perseverance in Christ Jesus. It all comes down to this: we are tired from trying to make something of our lives. In actuality, we, as humans, cannot make anything out of our lives. Not one thing good comes in the control freak character of humanity, other than the space for great conviction. In our tiredness, we realize our inadequacy and inability to handle anything on our own. Thus enters grace in the form of the Blessed Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Jesus who heals the weak and carries the burdens of the sinful. Jesus who rejuvenates the exhausted and gives hope to the lost. Jesus who opens the way for us to the life-giving Father whom can bring us to vibrancy. Jesus.
So yes, today I am tired. So tired, I can’t feel anything else. But in this tiredness, I am so grateful because I remember that I fail and fall and stumble over and over and over again. Yet God. Yet God, can pick me up and help me walk when I feel I can’t go on; gives me peace and breath when I feel overwhelmed by the state of this broken world we live in; can make the pressures burdening me into vitality that spurs me towards Him and Truth. And when my mind wants to quit whirring and my heart wants to quit breaking and my soul cries for the Lord to return this very moment, I am reminded of God’s unfailing mercy for restless beings like myself and my fellow soon-to-be graduates. His Spirit fills us over and over again and in Him we have no condemnation; no expectations to meet; no case to defend. His love is unending and His grace more than sufficient. All we need to do is stop and drink in, especially when we are tired.
Praise be to the Lord, God Almighty.
