Have We Met?

Megan and I sometimes joke with each other by saying, "Have we met?"  She usually says it when I ask her if she wants to climb some crazy mountain or jump out of a plane with me.  "Have we met?"  Yes, yes we have.  Someday, i will get you to climb that thing with me.  Someday.  I usually say "Have we met?" when Megan asks me about organizational preferences or if I would like to get up extra early (before 9am) to do..well...anything.  Or if she can talk to me about planning our day before I have had any coffee.  Someday babe.  Someday I will do those things.

But in the aftermath of the last few years of my professional life, something peculiar has started to happen.  It honestly happened for the first time about 5 years ago when I was fishing with a dear friend at their cabin in Northern Wisconsin, also known as God's summer house.  I will absolutely never forget this moment.  I think I am still trying to learn from it.  Someday, I suppose.

Greg and I were standing on the pier at their cabin fishing in the dying daylight.  I had been struggling through some incredibly difficult times and was just starting to figure out that I was suffering deeply from depression and anxiety.  I was in the final stages of my preparation for ministry and we started to talk.  He started to tell me how good of a pastor I was going to be.  How kind and intelligent I was.  How well I related to people and would be so good at helping them and leading them.  I don't remember all of what he said because as it continued on for more than the 2.5 seconds I though a conversation listing my virtues should last, I vaguely recall a question I wanted to ask him.

"Have we met?"

I couldn't believe this man, the father of my very best friend, a man who knew me incredibly well, would say such incredible things about me.  I couldn't believe that any of what he was saying was actually true.  "Greg," I wanted to say, "have we met?"

I'm sure this goes further back, but in recent weeks it has come back with a vengeance.

I have been trying to compile a resume for different jobs in the Asheville Area.  Regrettably, "I like mountains a lot" and "beer tastes really good" aren't great resume bullets.  So Megan and I started trying to list my skills.  Her list was really long and incredible.  I'd totally hire that guy.  Totally.  But as I heard her talk about all the things I can do, that familiar question arose again.  "Have we met?"

It took me two days to write 3 sentences of a cover letter that we eventually decided not to use because my amazing wife wrote a full one in a matter of minutes.  I just couldn't come up with a single reason why someone should hire me.

At the conference/ retreat/ life saving respite I recently attended, we talked at length about our identity.  Not in the eyes of others, but in the eyes of the only One who matters, Jesus.  The phrase "remember your baptism" regrettably almost became a kind of punch line.  Remember your baptism.

Remember that you are exactly who God says you are.  Beloved.  That you are exactly who God has called you to be.  A disciple.  A husband.  A father (currently to a fur baby but hopefully to real ones someday.  A pastor, maybe not right now but again sometime.

Back in January, as Megan and I flew home from our honeymoon to Denmark, I started reading a book by Eugene Peterson called "To Run With the Horses."  It was the story of Jeremiah and the hell the people of Israel put him through for simply doing what God had called him to do.   For any of you who know hints about the past year of my life, and really both of my ordained calls, you can figure out pretty quickly why this resonated with me.  But in the midst of all of this hell, Jeremiah was constantly reminded of his name.  Not Jeremiah.  That was the name his parents gave him.  He was reminded of this:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew[a] you,     before you were born I set you apart;     I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

6 “Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.” 7 But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. 8 Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,"  Jeremiah 1:5-6

This was the name that God had given him.  And Jeremiah never forgot it and never trusted anyone else to name him.  But I do sometimes wonder if, in the midst of his pain and agony over the mistreatment of the very people he had come to serve and to save, Jeremiah ever found himself reflecting on the name God gave him and asked, "Have we met?"  To which God most certainly answered, "Of course we have Jeremiah.  I knew you before you were even you." 

I sincerely doubt I will be able to kick this nasty habit of not believing the good things people say any time soon.  It is about as ingrained in me as my love for mountains at this point.  But that doesn't mean I won't start trying to hear the truth.  Trying, with all of my strength, to remember the name God has given me.  Prophet.  Evangelist.  Husband.  Mountain man (Okay maybe that one is mine, but God has to be behind that some how). 

 I will try with all of my strength and then I will rely on God's power when that inevitably fails,  Because int he end that is what maintained and supported Jeremiah.  Not his iron clad will, but the eternal will of the Lord of the Universe fully dwelling in his heart and in his life.  In every breath and in every thought, word and deed.  Someday.  

Someday I will no longer think, "Have we met?" when God, family and friends speak well of me.  Someday, I might even say, "you missed a few things."  Someday.  


This might seem a bit self serving, but if you feel so inclined, leave a comment with something you know about me.  Something I am good at or that makes me who I am, from your experience of me at least.  Megan said I should do this and my utter reluctance probably means she is right.