I’m not very eloquent, but I believe that everyone has a story and this is mine. I doubt that I’ll ever do anything with this story, but right now, I feel like writing it down. Some thing inside of me wants to get out. I get like this mostly when I get sad. Sometimes the harsh reality of living wears you down. There are too many things around you to make you sad, and things just keep pushing and pushing on you and you almost feel like the inside of you collapses. That’s when I feel like writing. That’s how I feel today.

I read somewhere in a book once that everyone on this planet is a walking-around-masterpiece; that people are each a beautiful work of art. The trick is that some people’s art is covered up with dirt, and it’s our job to work really hard to gently remove all the dirt so that we can see the beautiful painting underneath. This business of removing the dirt is hard long work. It takes a truck full of patience and can last a whole life time. I’ve been taught that in my work, that is the work of church, it’s my job to unearth these beautiful masterpieces with patience and love. At first I thought this was a marvelous idea, that we’re all wonderful people if we just peel away enough dirt. Well, my soul is tired of looking through dirt. And all this digging has made me covered in dust, sometimes mud, making my own masterpiece of soul covered in hurt and scars and muck. Sometimes life is just hard, and dirty, and other people’s problems make your soul collapse.

I think that it’s a choice to be happy, or not to be happy. I think sometimes you have to make yourself be happy. You have to force yourself to have a good attitude. I remember a time in ministry where I was very very busy. Sometimes we wear business as a badge of honor, saying to the world, “look at how important I am, being so so busy, I am proud to be so busy.” In fact, some people look down their noses at other people for not being busy enough. It’s done subtly. Like asking what someone is doing for the weekend, and upon hearing them say “nothing” think to one’s self “I am busier, therefore more important and popular and well-liked, therefore better.” It’s a ridiculous line of thinking. Business does not mean that one is better. Actually, I think the opposite is true. The less busy a person is, the more the person is pieced together, more whole, with less holes. Busy people are always rushing and frantic and don’t know how to sit. And breathe. They can’t imagine just sitting on the couch, looking outside, just thinking. They are too busy. I am sometimes the busy person wearing their business like a badge of honor. But then I noticed that my soul had pieces missing. Liking I had run from one thing to the next and part of my soul came flying off and I was too busy to notice and forgot to pick it up. If I was less busy, I would have realized that my soul was there lying on the ground getting trampled by everything around me. Finally when I sat on the couch and breathed, only then did I realize that I lost part of myself, and had to go back and recover it, only to find it bruised, ran over, and kicked around. Business does that to your soul, it leaves you bruised and weary.

But let’s face it, sometimes we’re just plain busy and there really doesn’t seem like there’s much that we can do about it. Or we could have done something about it sooner, by saying NO I WILL NOT DO THAT, NO I WILL NOT COMMIT TO YET ANOTHER ACTIVITY, NO! But instead, for some reason, we said “yes.” My first job out of college was working at a church. I said yes to everything, even things that I wasn’t asked to do. It’s just who I am, I say yes. I didn’t realize at the time, but saying yes to everything meant saying “no” to my soul. At one point after about a year, I was way over my head. I was very busy, in the worst possible kind of way. It was awful. I felt all the time like I was carrying around a very heavy backpack full of 5 thick text books and nothing I did would relieve the pressure on my back. Then I had to climb Half Dome wearing the backpack and realized that text books are no good when you’re thirsty. In other words, I had too many responsibilities, and not enough resources, at least none from myself. I finally realized that I couldn’t make water from textbooks, but I knew someone who could. It’s funny that we often turn to God when we need miracles.

During this period of time I decided that I needed to make choice to have a good attitude. There was no help in just complaining all the time. Someone famous, or well-known (or something like that) said that life is 10% what happens to us and 90% our attitude toward what happens. If that was the case, I decided that I needed to make an effort to have a good attitude. I started giving my text books away, sometimes letting a friend or co-worker take one, other times just abandoning them by the side of the trail. It made the hike much more pleasant. A friend gave me water, the kind of water that never runs dry, and that friend hiked with me. The hike actually became beautiful. Life is beautiful when we are looking at it through the right attitude. My hiking companion with the water helped me see clearly all the good things - helped me to keep looking through the dirt.

The busy period ended.

Then it started again. So goes life.

My mom told me recently that there is always something that we’re striving for, or hiking up to. My mom is very wise. She’s right of course, we’re always going toward a goal. My mom thinks that this is a good thing. She’s right there too. Goals give purpose and give shape and meaning to our lives. I’ve seen people who don’t have purpose. Their souls start dying slowly. Or I’ve seen people who have purpose in an area that kills them, like alcohol. Alcohol is my very worst enemy. I hate alcohol. I’ve seen it destroy too many relationships. I hate the stuff.

Somehow I hope to live between the paradigm of having goals, yet not being so busy that I cannot sit on the couch and breathe and think. A friend calls this spot the sweet spot. I feel like I’m usually a pendulum swinging from one side to the other. Too busy, No Goals, Too busy, No Goals, in rhythm, like the swinging of the second hand on the old clock that sat in the living room when I was growing up. That clock only stopped in the middle when it was broken. I want to be that broken clock, sitting right in the middle, not too busy or no goals, but just right. It’s not possible. Inevitably, my dad would come by and wind the thing up again, and it would start swinging again. I don’t think it’s possible to be in complete balance. There is always some kind of chaos in life that pushes us from one side to the other and back again. But here is beauty too. God made the world chaotic and interesting and breathtakingly beautiful. Such emotion doesn’t stir without movement and swinging. We have to swing or else we’re just broken clocks. Broken clocks end up in the garage awaiting repair, then in garage sales.

A church is a very interesting place to work. So far it’s the only place I’ve worked. I’m only 24 years old. I haven’t lived very long. I’ve lived long enough to know that I don’t want to work at a church anymore. I think that the things I’m good at would be better used as a teacher, so that’s what I’m planning to do. This week I explained to the church board that I’m not leaving ministry, just changing direction. My whole life will be ministry. Every person who follows Jesus is in ministry. I think that I will be better at ministry when I don’t work at a church.

¶ 5:55 PM