a sketch

Vocation. The thing about vocation is that you just know what you're supposed to do, who you're supposed to be and to become. The more I pray, the more I search, the more the word of God comes to me: "Prepare the Way." That is what God wants me to do: preach the gospel. Announce the king and, as his herald and emissary, call people to loyalty to the king. And while I know this, there's this fear: I'm timid. I'm not bold. I'm shy in many ways, often fearful of confrontation. I've led a disappointing life, one marked quite poignantly by failure. I work a minimum-wage job, I am often overwhelmed emotionally, I can be, at times, unstable. And yet here's God, inviting me--no, summoning me--to be a bold and fearless herald of his kingdom, to announce an unsettling proclamation, to call out false gods and pseudo-gods wherever they may be. But I'm timid, and I'm shy, I look like I'm twelve, and I often wonder if I've gotten this wrong--at least, I try to convince myself this isn't what God wants me to do, for a variety of reasons (fear being one of them)--but god is always there, reminding me: "You're mine, and I've chosen you to be a light in the darkness, a guide to the blind, a teacher of fools." But I feel swamped in darkness, blind as an eye-gouged Zedekiah, a fool in thought and praxis.

Calling. I vividly remember when God called me to this task. I was in prayer and worship alone when I heard what I can only describe as a semi-audible voice: "Prepare the Way." My heart stopped and the world slowed and I knew and still know: God had spoken to me. It was this which led me to C.C.U. I was determined to advance God's kingdom. I studied and I prayed and I led Bible studies and preached sermons and served as a leader in my church. People spoke often of how God would use me, how God spoke to them through me, encouraging and convicting and enlightening them. I was filled with an insurmountable passion, a fire in my gut, and like Jeremiah I cried out, "There is in my heart a burning fire in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot!" I fell in love with God and with Jesus and felt joy and peace and knew this is what God wanted me to do, that he was leading me to C.C.U. where I could receive training in the advance of his kingdom.

Disintegration. Depression overcame me my sophomore year of college, and I embraced in my weakness and despair all those classic escapism techniques: sex, drugs, and alcohol. I became a bitter and calloused person, void of any hope and life, a shell of what I had once been. I allowed the sin in my life to infect me to the bones, and I became, in a sense, dehumanized. I reached a cataclysmic low and, in a sense, repented. I stopped the performance of the sins but retained the corrupted heart. In February of this year, after months and months of refusing God's heed to fully and finally repent (in truth, while I stopped worshiping the false gods of sex and pleasure, I didn't turn to God but turned to worshiping the false gods of pride and fortune), God dealt me a deeply-wounding blow. It was a blow of wounding to bring about healing. He hurt me so that he could restore me. The very night all this happened, God spoke to me again: I wept, asking him, "Why would you let this happen to me if you love me?" and he replied, "I didn't let this happen to you. I made it happen to you because I love you." Having ignored all of God's pleadings with me to repent, God's declarations meant to bring me to my knees, he did what I refused to do on my own: he brought me to my knees, and not so that I could stay there, curling into a fetal position and whimpering about my life. Rather, he brought me to my knees so that he could lift me up again.

Repentance. I fled to a sanctuary and really began probing--in thought and prayer and study--what had happened. Eventually, after nearly two months of wrestling both with God and the intensifying pain of what happened in February, I knelt before God and repented. I turned from my false gods to him. And in a week, the pain of February vanished, completely gone, not even an inkling returning to visit me since then. It wasn't as if the pain faded, or even decreased into a mere trickle to try up. It just went away. One night I was in great pain over what happened, and the next day I went to bed and realized: I don't feel anything. It wasn't a fluke, it was an answer to prayer. The blow had been struck, I had been wounded, and when I repented, the healing began--the first step being the divine eradication of the emotional hell ensuing following the events in February.

Healing. The process of healing, a process that continues even now, is no pleasant thing. Just as a wound itches and burns as it heals, so it is--often, and for me--with spiritual healing. There's purging, inflammation, bruising. Scars form and peel off and the wound is opened again. But healing goes on, a healing down by the Spirit. My spiritual healing has involved much self-analyses and confessions, the splintering of pride and the shattering of dreams. It's involved the exposure of my corrupted heart, of the false gods I have worshiped and crucifying them in my mind even as they whisper in my heart. It's a brutal healing, to say the least; but it's a good healing. I am being developed into a stronger and better person, and not by my own doing, but by the power of the Spirit. I am experiencing peace and joy again.

Re:thinking. Amidst all of this, I have been rethinking everything: myself, my life, my world, and my God. Living for years in a state of ruined produced all sorts of flawed thinking and erroneous perceptions. The errors in my meta-narrative have been and are being exposed in the light of the gospel, and piece-by-piece, wing-by-wing, they are being dismantled. Rebuilding is taking place. The way I perceive God, the world, myself, and life itself is being built into a new shape. 

Arabia. And so I find myself being healed, rethinking everything, bathing in prayer and scripture, seeking at least a flimsy coherent framework for my thoughts and praxis. At the center of all this lies the wrestling with vocation, and in that is the wrestling with a certain promise of God delivered to me in December of 2006. This is my Arabia: I know, in my heart and mind, that which God has called me to; and I am seeking out how it will work out, what it will look like en-fleshed. I perceive this to be a critical part of my life. On the outside, it seems run-of-the-mill. Working full-time at Starbucks, paying my bills, going to bed early every night, juggling car troubles. But on the inside, there is a stormy sea with the promise of calm skies on the other side of restoration. 

Restoration. God wounded me so that he could heal me. And he heals me so that he can exalt me, lift me up, restore me. I believe that had I remained committed to God years ago, my life would look drastically different. God won't change the past, but he can remake the future. My vocation hasn't changed: "Prepare the Way." The promise of God is not null and void. Now, what restoration will look like the other side of Arabia, only God knows, and I'll simply have to find out. For now I am left with the call--"Announce the king and call his subjects to loyalty!"--and I am confident the Spirit will show me the way.