Adventures

As if life and perspectives couldn’t get complicated enough, as always, I am reading a new book and it is stirring something in me that hasn’t been awakened in a while. In fact, this old longing is at once perfectly familiar, as if it has been my constant companion for years, but brings with it a new tenacity, a new awareness that frightens the hell out of me.
I’m reading Through Painted Deserts, by Donald Miller. If you have ever read my ramblings, you would know, he happens to be one of my favorite authors. There are few that have spoken a language that is so understood by my own cravings of soul, that when I read their words, I understand the desire to stand up and shout “Hallelujah! Amen! Preach it brother!” This would be much funnier if I could somehow describe the sort of melancholy ease with which he writes, but still, you get the picture.
I’m only a few chapters in, but the theme, the question, the larger thesis is already clear. He has articulately stated the very restlessness that has at once repulsed and prompted me: The greater questions of why. Why this, why that, and why does it matter? What does it really mean for tomorrow, for a year from now, for ten seconds from now?
I have grown up in a very powerful culture. There is a normal and an abnormal. There is acceptable and unacceptable. When someone happens to stumble outside those bounds, there is this tacit acknowledgement that while trying to be “gracious” expects you to fall back in line. Everyone gets to the end goal differently, but the end goal, those are all the same.
It’s weird when this happens. Two people begin to be created. If you are anyone that wants more, or to understand more, or to think deeper, or to challenge and be challenged, immediately, you understand how inherently different you are. And like every normal person, youth propels the desire to fit in, to be accepted and seen as normal, the one thing you may never be. There are those that ask the why questions and those that don’t need to. When those lines are divided, they are hard to cross back over. Once your path has been decided, it is hard to break with it, because the why questions inevitably determine the how questions. Why all these things are the way are, and what is important and what do I believe about them and eventually, how to live that out? We are the product of what we do, but very few feel the pull between who they may be, and who they ought to be.
I, feel the pull. And even more so, I feel the pull, but see myself making decisions every day that, instead of leading me closer to becoming more myself, I am choosing to believe the storyline of my culture and I am not sure that is really what I want.
I want a family, I want a home, I want kids running in and out, I want friends over for Superbowl Sunday and late night dinners and Thanksgivings. But I can’t deny how important it feels to me, to live a life of adventure. There is so much to see and do and there are very few moments that string together our lives. It is great to have a family, but when your world is very small, I wonder how much we miss out on the glory of God.
We describe God as big, mysterious, beautiful, wondrous, compassionate, a shelter in times of trouble, the King of all Kings, the Alpha Omega…. These are huge terms. The encompass time, heavens, oceans, mountains and seas. They speak of justice, community, kindness and the chase. How often do we mistake restlessness for being without peace? What if the stirrings that surface, that cause the triple beat of heart when we see a horizon, a skyline unsearched, a view of the cosmos from the earth, what if those aren’t the things we should be tempering, but what if they are the very things we should be pushing into?
I face a dilemma. There are two paths that stretch out in front of me. Twice now I have been on the brink of lifetime commitments that would determine my path as acceptable and right by my culture. I would fit. And at least, if I don’t have the marriage and the family, it puts me square back in the acceptable range to be searching it out. But what if, what if that is something that is supposed to happen later?
Every day I get up, go to the gym, work out, get in my car, drive to my job, work my day and head back home in the same car. The same destination everyday with the same route and the same encounters. I keep waiting for something to change it up, for something different to come my way, to feel comfortable with my “how” choices, but I can’t ignore what confronts my soul. I have already seemed to have made my choice and I am not sure it what the right one.
When you grow up with the sort of dual persona that I have, it breeds a certain amount of distrust of yourself. I would ask the questions I thought were important, only to have them looked at with incredulity, and when I pushed back, a definite sense of displacement. Eventually you learn, you have to sacrifice your own questions, beliefs, answers to fit with the norm around you. So the duality festers and grows and forces you to either make rash decisions you think others would make, or to make no decisions at all, for fear of losing either yourself or an imagined future.
Case in point: my marriage. I loved him, but not the way someone deserves to be loved when they ask you forever, and not the way someone deserves when they say yes. But it was the path that was laid out before me. And I knew where it was headed and I didn’t trust myself to do anything different. When it fell apart, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. So I struck out again, but this time, I found a different sort of love and it fulfilled a different place in me and again, I gave up the longings for it and again it ended in disaster. Lately I have been wondering, how much of that is accident and collision, as it is the two personalities trying to walk a line in my life that maybe shouldn’t be walked. I keep saying I want roots, but when it comes down to it, I refuse to do it.
I got approved for a home loan, I looked, but nothing was ever good enough. I could have moved out with a friend of mine, but everyone wanted a year lease and I didn’t want to do that. I still have boxes unpacked and I keep all of my contracts month to month. But if you had asked me a month ago, I would have told you I was going nowhere and I was finally settling in. As if that process takes a year.
I crave stability, but don’t want to settle anywhere for fear that it may not be where I want to end up. I keep looking out at the horizon, wondering what else is out there and would something, somewhere else fit better?
In doing the stripping down and refitting for the last few months, I have come to one realization: I have no freaking clue what I want, or what I need. I just know I don’t want to keep living as if my life is already over.
I want my cake and to eat it too. I want love, life, community, adventure, growth, to see the mystery of God, to chase His dreams, to live a life worthy of His promises. I want to be stretched, pulled, anchored, wizened, softened and calloused. I want to learn to love freely, trust exuberantly and be shrewd in my encounters. I want to learn to trust myself and the pulls in my soul, and never regret a minute of this life. I want to honor the sacrifice that has made it possible for me to live connected to others and given me a sense of hope and wonder that so many before me may have struggled to find. I want to suffer with those that suffer, to laugh with those who laugh and never be afraid of tomorrow, but instead, excited to see the day break for what it may bring.
I am nowhere near any of that, and I want to learn how to get there, but I guess that is for when the why’s are slightly more filled out. Why this way, why that way and why do I have to choose?
How big are you God, and if it isn’t too late, can we still go on an adventure?