how i understand my life...

How I understand my life, how I find significance in the events and the different chapters unfolding, comes from the way that I view reality as a whole. My story fits into the greater story, the greater narrative, and I plug my story into that. Here’s one way I might interpret it:

I was born for a reason, chosen by God as one of many to advance his kingdom using my God-given talents and abilities. My mission in life comes directly from God, revealed to me in prayers, through conversations with others, and by the gut-wrenching conviction of the Spirit. I was filled with joy, with passion, with excitement for God and his kingdom. But somewhere along the line I stumbled away from that, and the stumbling became a slow & steady walk. The pain and depression sent me from God, and I sought to carve my own life based on my own desires with no real regard for his: one unwise and selfish decision after another has led me to this current place of disappointment, regret, disillusionment and lostness. If I were to have stuck with God, to have endured through the temptations and pain, then perhaps things would look wildly different. Perhaps my life is simply what happens when God respects our decisions and lets things unfold without his intervention and help and guidance? Perhaps had I stuck with God, I would be where I thought I would be: preaching and teaching, loving and being loved, maybe even with a family.

And looking back down the line, perhaps all God wants is my repentance. Perhaps God simply wants me back. Perhaps he hasn’t given up on me, hasn’t given up on his plan for me. I can look back over the years and see where God has called me to repentance, with the promise of restoration on the other side. I can look back through it all, and I can see episodes and events both of God’s stern demand for my repentance and of his love and concern for me. Quieter moments when I can hear him, when I can feel him, when I know he’s still there, that he still cares. Maybe the different chapters of my life, chapters promising movement but birthing only stagnation, are chapters of God calling me back to himself. And Cincinnati? Carly said that she felt that Cincinnati was a “dark” move for me, that it would not end up well. I’d always trusted her judgments before, but not when her judgments fell on my shoulders. But maybe she was right: I would be lying if I said that when Cincinnati came, I was sick of the guilt, I was sick of the failing, I was sick of riding the line with God. I went the opposite direction, and where has it gotten me? All along the emptiness, the barrenness, stood in stark contrast to the life I previously knew: where I had been joyful, there was sorrow; where I had been at peace, there was inner turmoil; where I had hope, there was only hopelessness. All this came to a head with The Quest, and perhaps The Quest is yet again one of God’s little techniques to try and steer me back towards him. And then, of course, during this chapter, there is Mandy K., and what she symbolizes: rebirth, renewal. With her I tasted what I always wanted, caught a glimpse of the life of loving and being loved and advancing the kingdom together. It came foreign to me, like it was rising out of the depths, coming back to the surface, and I felt new strength, new vitality, a new eagerness for life. Maybe that’s what Mandy K. is: not “The One,” not the one that slipped through my fingers, but a message from God: “Hope is not lost. This lesson is painful. But learn from it.” And the whole lymphoma scare? It came, it seems, at just the right time to propel me into real, hard thinking about my life and relationship with God.

All through my life there are strange little things to make me think God’s not done with me, that he hasn’t given up on me and what he wants me to do and be for him. One could make the argument that God has something great he wants me to do, as many have prophesied; but that the “powers and principalities”, whatever they might be—a shadowy name for some shadowy things—worked in my life against me, and I succumbed, didn’t stand the test. It could be said that there are forces, hidden and sinister, influencing me away from God’s calling. But at the end of the day, there remains the fact that what’s brought me to this point are my decisions, my choices, my stubborn refusal to repent coupled with my own sinful and rebellious heart. Blame cannot be shifted from where blame is due: I must accept that my current state-of-affairs is not something God has done but something I have done. For as much as I may be disappointed in God, why should I assume he isn’t disappointed in me? When I’m mad at God for not coming through, for not answering my prayers, for not rescuing me from my emptiness, perhaps I should be spending a little more time actually striving to obey and know him? As much as I might ask, “How long, O God?” perhaps God is asking me, “How long, O Man?” A steady stream of bad and selfish decisions has brought me to this point; I dig my own hole and then ask God to bail me out. He doesn’t, I keep making bad decisions, and the hole gets deeper. And I ask some more. But maybe God isn’t giving handouts this time. Maybe I’m too old for that. Maybe I’m no longer the little child who doesn’t know up from down but the rebellious son who takes his part of the inheritance, leaves his father’s house, and tries to carve out a life on his own accord. Maybe the reason God isn’t bailing me out is because I’m not a child now but a man, and as such I need to take responsibility for what’s become of my life and do something about it. Maybe it’s simply time to Grow Up.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the story of the Prodigal Son, how it so easily speaks to my situation. I enjoyed a life of joy, peace, and hope in the house of my father, but I wanted to experience life, I wanted to do things my own way, so I just left the house and plunged into the world. But this world is filled with grot and rot, and like the Prodigal Son eating with the pigs, I’ve found myself entrenched in a life I hate. I keep looking to the horizon, waiting for my Father to come looking for me. But he doesn’t come. The Prodigal Son had to make the first move: he had to admit his mistake, had to confess his sin, had to come to terms with what he had done. By walking up that road, all dirty and stinky, the son was admitting that he was wrong, acknowledging he’d fucked up. And moving towards his father’s house, the father came running down the drive to greet him, to wrap him up into his arms, to bring him into the house, clean him up, feed him, make him warm, and celebrate his return. Let’s not imagine that everything was A OK with the son after that: he spent a considerable amount of time eating with pigs, there’s a lot he’d need to relearn, a lot of issues he’d have to deal with. But he’d be dealing with them in his father’s house, working through them not just with his father but with his fellow brothers and sisters. Perhaps this story, or at least my reading of it here, speaks to my own situation: feeding with the pigs, nostalgic for the Old Life, missing my father’s home; maybe I need to Grow Up, go back to that house, fall into my Father’s arms, confess my sins and shortcomings and fears and failures, and let him heal me as I find strength and encouragement with him and his family, our family.

This certainly does seem like a strange way of looking at my life, at least to some. How I interpret my life comes down to how I view reality. There is reality, and there is just one of it. If any worldview is correct, all others are wrong at points; and if the Judeo-Christian worldview is correct, then this is a coherent understanding of my life in light of that worldview. As skeptical as I am, I must learn that my skepticism has limits. I cannot claim with any absolute certainty that this-or-that worldview is correct; but I can admit, in light of the epistemological uncertainty, that this-or-that worldview may very well be the one where truth abides. If the Judeo-Christian worldview is correct, then this is a solid way of understanding my life as it is, how it’s gotten to this point, where it may very well go. And where might it go? If I continue to refuse God, if I continue to wallow in my guilt, in my depression, in my rebellion, then I cannot expect God to help me. It’s not that “God helps only those who helps themselves”; but if I continually turn my back on him, refuse to heed his warnings, then I am very well taking the spade in my own hands and setting it to the earth. If I repent, then what? I have seen where the life without God goes, and I don’t like it; but if I repent, if I finally do what I have flirted with doing for so long—turning everything over to him, surrendering to him fully, striving with all due diligence to become what he wants me to be in Christ—then that future is yet unwritten.