So it has been a few days, also known as almost three weeks, since I have written. There is a very good reason why. I have been an absolute wreck of a human being for most of it. I didn't know how to write anything that wouldn't leave most of my few readers wondering about my personal safety because quiet honestly, I was worried too. I was angry, sad, furious, depressed, sometimes happy, most times despondent. Its been a rough few weeks. Why you ask? I blame Lowe's.
I have been looking for jobs since we arrived in Asheville. "How hard could it be?" I asked myself. Really freaking hard was the answer.
Breweries, REI, Lowe's, Home Depot, Craigslift ads. I applied to them all and figured people would take one look at my resume and fire half their staff to make room for me. Okay, so thats not what I was actually thinking, but my reaction to a little rejection would leave most people thinking otherwise.
It started with Lowe's two Fridays ago. It continued with Sierra Nevada the following Monday and New Belgium that Tuesday. But really it was all about Lowe's. If I can't ge a job at Lowe's, what chance do I stand with these other places. After the Lowe's thing, I knew what was going to happen with Sierra and New Belgium. I started pondering my existence and my value in ways I hadn't done in years. Maybe even ever. And it always came back to this: I can't get a job at Lowe's.
I do want to make it clear, that I don't think less of people who work at Lowe's. Fine, hardworking and dedicated people. Almost certainly with better heads on their shoulders and more perspective than I could hope for. The problem was me. No, I don't think less of people who work at Lowe's. I just think WAY TOO MUCH, of myself. This, it turns out, would be my undoing.
Slowly but surely, as flood waters receding after a deluge, my hope retreated form me. I began to question our decision to leave Fulton. Not only that, but my decision to save my self and my wife from the beat down that was the situation at my last church. I began to long for the days of a steady pay check and the comfort that brought. And I quickly began to feel trapped and abandoned. I felt like...Israel in the wilderness. "Sure was nice building bricks in Egypt. At least there we had food on the table. At least there we had a roof over our heads. At least there..." This was essentially the complaints of the people as Moses marched them toward the single greatest blessing in any of their lives. Their complaints and accusations toward God cascading toward heaven just as their pleas and mourning had down before God freed them from slavery. "Surely," they said, "God has simply led us out of our slavery into death. He has brought us away form our homes and our work, slave quarters and oppression though they may be, and has abandoned us here." So it was with me.
But Moses kept speaking to them. Encouraging them. God kept blessing them. Manna from heaven and water from the stone. Unforseen hope in a desolation of epic proportions. Grace upon grace, even in the midst of rejection from the people. And so it has been with me.
In the midst of this, my wife has continued to love me, though I certainly don't deserve it. God has continued to speak to me, despite my best efforts at plugging my ears and demanding I be allowed to sit in the ashes of my life and mourn.
The last two sundays at two VERY different churches, I heard the same message. We work incredibly hard to say no to God's blessings because those blessings require our desires to die. I, it seems, was perfectly content to not be content. I was more interested in my view how how this was supposed to go than the incredible blessing that has been presented to us. I was relentless in my pursuit of unhappiness. And God Bless my friend James and my wife for slapping me in the face with that truth. It hurt. But every death does. Even at the bottom of my despair last week, and it truly was as ad as it has been in recent memory, God blessed me anyway. I got a job.
Its a part time job at Home Depot that pays 9 bucks an hour, a far cry from anything we can actually live on. But that's not the last job I am going to get. It is simply the one God gave us to make sure we make it to the next one.
I just realized today what a blessing is upon Megan and I, despite the financial realities I desperately cling to to accuse God and curse this beautiful, incredible life that has been given to me. I am free from my slavery...at least for as long as I can refrain from returning to my chains. If history is any indication, it will be short lived, but I will fight it. I am free to learn and to try new things. We are free to love each other with out the church getting in the way.
My new goal is to try to let God bless me. I really am not good at this. I want to work for everything. Earn everything. Be deserving of everything. This practice of self reliance has led to the sin of self aggrandizement. For the time being, I think that self has died. But soon enough it will return. Soon enough I will lament that life isn't as I PLANNED IT. At that point i will need reminding that that's good. In fact that is the best news possible. For if the life that I have planned is dead, that means that the life that God has planned, the only life truly worth living is ever closer to becoming a reality.
I am blessed. I have a wife that loves me. I am blessed. I have a job. I am blessed, above all of these things, because the life that I so carefully planned and plotted to create, is falling apart around me, thus making room for the life that My Father, My Savior and My Lord has planned for me from before the foundations of the earth were set.
I died last week. But I am blessed because of it. I am alive again because of it. I am sure I will need to die again. Maybe even later today when I do a workout comprised solely of running and the pride of my athletic prowess is murdered before my very sweaty eyes. But I am really talking about my plans. My plots. My idols. The things that I stack up to insulate myself against all blessings and grace. Because in that end that's what this has all been about. I don't want grace. I want earning. I want to measure up. I want to deserve it. But no longer. Blessed are the poor in Spirit. May I be that yet again. Blessed are those who mourn, and Lord have I mourned my own death these last weeks. Bless me again Lord. Kill me again too. Kill that which keeps you far from me. A castle of solitude and despair. Built by my own hands. Knock the walls down. No matter how painful. No matter how precious. Its You or its nothing.
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