A view from my dwelling - well, nearly.
This post marks the 100th for the blog that I begin sometime a bit over two years ago. Time waits for no man. The fact that it is the 100th post, a numerical milestone, plays the reflective strings that resonate in the history of my soul.
It would seem that a look over the past 100 posts would not just provide a summary of where I have been, but perhaps the direction for which I embark upon daily.
This season of life and particularly this day of writing can't help but ring the bell of reflection. Tomorrow's sun rises on the dawning of my first day as a man no longer in his twenties. That is scary.
The scare is not from the fact that I am old and in my thirties, rather, what happened to the years? Where did the time go? I think back to a time when I was looking forward to twenty; hardly even imaging what twenty-five would possibly be like. Hah! Twenty-five was simply a large stone by which the river of time washed over on its way to thirty, where-by I was stuck momentarily in the hole of the leeward flow.
And so, I sit here and steep for a bit in the contemplative mood brought about by aforementioned milestones and rimmed with the recent consumption of dark chocolate shaded by the hearing of loud and hard music.
The reflection of the past in the theatre of my brain brings about things said, things done, and things yet realized. "Things" because I care not talk about some, nor do I care to describe in detail others, much less take the time to do so. I once used to have a number of regrets in life, I've attempted to disbar myself from those - to release those regrets. Not simply because I don't believe they had or could have significance, but because living life in regret or with regrets seals the outcome by which a person would hope to recover those regrets.
I speak of regrets now as that is what is significant to me in the past. Perhaps others deal with the 'regrets' differently; yet captured in similar contexts such as poor decisions, dreams not realized, hope smothered by a certain 'reality', etc. Yet regrets only become negatively significant if they are perceived as failures and become the defining moments of a life. Regrets may strike the nerve of failure, yet the constructive attitude may rather view those regrets as a path by which the high ground of a vision cast can now be pursued mightily.
The film reel of life brings to the mind images and situations which notably shaped me. More so, they became a preparation. A preparation for where I am now; a preparation for the time to come. It is quite easy to see how those decisions and experiences of years past comes into play today - whether it be the time spent hanging out with friends and doing things I am not so proud of; or participating in a team of government construction administrators trying to do the best we could with what we had, working the long hours bringing about gradual change and completeness contextualized by what we thought right to do in the face of thankless owners and internal government poor management. It's quite easy to identify how the experiences and decisions shaped, in part, who I am now and prepared me for this life now.
Where I am now is, in and of itself, a season full of satisfaction and questioning of what is next; of what this life may hold. I don't doubt the path that has brought me here or the Hand by which has guided me. Nor do I doubt the path for which the future may hold. There are no regrets now.
I don't know where the next step is. For now, for this season, I am here in Oxford, New Zealand. Realizing that it is not the work that is defining what I am and what I am all about, rather it is who I am that defines what I do and what I am all about. Does that make sense?
By my personality I am a striver - a person who continues to strive to do things better or to just be busy thinking that such is what is necessary. It's easy to work and to keep the hands busy. More difficult it is to stop - stop striving in order to listen, to think, to consider.
The heart of the matter is this - I am a believer in Christ Jesus and have wholly given life to Him. And it is only within the context of my relationship with Him that I truly can accurately reflect upon my life up until now, and the life yet to come. Truth and purpose now easily flow from the images of past events and memories. Life in it's direction is more purposeful, yet certainly more challenging.
For me, life is no longer a striving after something for which I may never reach - the American dream, or the thought of bringing about satisfaction through the accomplishment of an arbitrary goal. Satisfaction in life is now found in my identity through Him, by which I have never had to strive for to reach. I can do nothing more or nothing less to find God. He's already here and has provided a way to Him that is contrary to the 'worlds' popular opinion of what such should look like.
And no, I am not going to preach here - you'll either think I am a religious fanatic or a have a genuine belief that has somehow misplaced what a person may think I should be doing. Frankly, I don't care what a person may think - my identity is not influenced by what another will think for that is no identity at all.
So I choose now to live in Truth and a life that is something much more real than anything I have experienced before. I don't mean a life of "Christianity" as the Western world now largly views it - for that is a label by which we have applied to something very much unlike what Jesus had lived like. Where is the Love? This is a choice based on personal experience, personal revelation and a consciencse decision.
Screw the labels and the judgement that comes along with them. Dare one cast judgement againest another without first examining that 'self' by which they live by? I'm reminded of something I have read before: "hell is truth relized too late".
A view opposite from that at the beggining of this post
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And so, what is it that I do here? Right now I have a hand in many aspects of the backbone service ministries at this YWAM Base that include the following general catagories:
- Building Project Manager
- Facilities & Grounds
- Transportation
- I/T (Computers, Networks, etc.)
- Outreach Budgets for Teams
- Also student with the Basic Leadership School
Those are general categories. What does that look like on 'typical' day - not that there is such a thing. Well, perhaps it would mean coordinating and the work of a mechanic or seeing to the road worthiness of any of our 4 cars or 10 vans; communicating with he local council (government) with respect to our ongoing application for requesting initial approval of a new facility construction project; checking out the validity and evaluating the priority of a reported maintenance issue within any of our 5 existing major residential structures; attempting to successfully re-establish the email client on some of our staff computers; or trying to figure out what's next to do on a list of things that changes daily.
The vans to which we are blessed to operate from this place
To say it is a busy life style is true; however, I try and think of it as full. There's not time to become bored during the day - rather the challenge is to separate personal and work time prior to realizing that burnout is around the corner. The difference here is made in considering again that it is not what I do, but who I am.
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Fancy rhetoric? I think not.
