A Prideful Heartache

It’s been an interesting week to say the least…A lot’s happened and it’s taking me a little while to wrap my head around it all. The Lord put some things into overdrive this week and I’ve had a couple moments where I felt like I really need to slam on the “breaks” if you know what I mean. The power of prayer continues to kick me in the butt. It’s amazing how faithful the Lord is when we give him control over our lives and I don’t mean ask him for the things “we want,” I mean handing him the things we think we want and letting him decide what’s right for us, or for others. One thing that happened this week was my parents sold our house, kind of weird, still can’t wrap my head around all that. I’ve known they’re moving to Pennsylvania for a couple of months (my dad’s already there) but I guess I never let it sink it. A lot has changed for me since then too, which led me to kind of push that whole “moving” idea into the back of my mind. I also chopped my hair off this week…not really a huge deal but one of those “weight off your shoulders” moments, literally. I don’t have an attachment to hair so I kind of did it on a whim and since my friend was the one cutting it I just gave her free reign. While I was getting it cut we talked about a lot of stuff, as most hairstylists and their clients do, but it was kind of crazy to talk about how the Lord’s putting us on the same page with so much. It’s just like this transition thing we’ve got going on, and I think so many people are in it too. We’re sitting watching life go by, having yearned for so long to just pursue Christ with all our hearts and get past this whole “American Dream” thing that’s been shoved down our throats, just not aware of how to do it. But now it’s happening, we see the footprints he’s laid before us and all we have to do is jump in. Just jump. Scary. Really scary. But exciting. The last sermon I went to at the Village talked about dreaming “Godly Dreams” for your children. Wow. Could you do ever do anything more for them??? Well, since I don’t have any kids, or am even close (that boat isn’t even at harbor if you know what I mean), I thought all week about what it means to dream those dreams for ourselves, and for the ones we love. Mind you, this isn’t “gee I hope I’ll get that golf swing down” or “man, if only I could make 6 figures!” We’re talking about Godly dreams, the ones God has in store for us when we go after Him first and foremost. The dreams where we live in the Kingdom of Heaven now, not tip-toe into it when our earthly bodies die, but the one where we run to it NOW.

I just finished Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell, kick A book you should read it. In there he talks about bringing living in the Kingdom today,

“True spirituality then is not about escaping this world to some other place where we will be forever. A Christian is not someone who expects to spend forever in heaven there. A Christian is someone who anticipates spending forever here, in a new heaven that comes to earth.”

I finished this earlier in the week, and like I said, it was an eventful week. Yet again, God graced me with so much more than I deserve (P.S. I learned a lot about grace this week, but we’ll get to that later). On Saturday we went down to Lancaster again and put on a little “jam” session, it was pretty tight I must say. Our friends Tay and Thomas sang and jammed for us, along with a bunch of their friends and ours. These people have more spiritual wisdom than anyone I’ve ever seen, it’s incredible. It’s like when they sing, the words that echo from the mic are only a fraction of the burning that’s in their hearts. You can see it in their eyes. There’s no show involved, they just get down to business. Not many people make me feel really young, but talking to Thomas makes me feel spiritually immature, and I am. Then again, he makes us all look like amateurs. He can sit there and tell me about how he went to jail for petty theft, and how he went back a couple of times for missing his parole hearings, but there is no bitterness in his heart about these things you know why? Thomas is first to admit that his pride got him in jail, his pride kept him there, and then his pride sent him back. This man is homeless! He never went to college, never read a self-help book or watched Dr. Phil to know he had to man up to his immaturity. He doesn’t complain about being homeless, he’s never even mentioned it to me. He only talks about the Lord, his family, his friends, and music. His character bursts with authenticity and honesty. Man I hope I can one day harbor half of the spirit that man has. More and more I see that by having “nothing” (and by nothing I mean the material things we’ve been told have meaning) we have so much more spiritually. It’s not an easy place to get to, especially in the culture we live in, and sometimes I catch myself wondering how the heck I could ever get to such a place. That’s where the transition phase comes in. We’re “in between” journeys here, ready to catch the next plane but a little scared to fly at the same time. But that’s when we look around and notice we’re not the only ones standing at the ticket counter ready to board, there’s a whole family beside us, ready to embark on the journey with us. So while we’re “transitioning” around these days, the Lord is placing people in our paths with the same anxieties and fears, but also with the same heart beat.

I ended the weekend at a John Mayer concert so I find it appropriate to use some of his lyrics to wrap up this week…“Someday I’ll fly/someday I’ll soar/Someday I’ll be/ something much more/Cause I’m bigger than my body gives me credit for…” So here’s to dreaming some Godly dreams this week…just get ready to soar when you do