somewhere between silence & screaming

Every once in a while, no matter how exhausted I may be, I just can’t shut my mind off.  It’s usually not a great blogging time for me, because the thoughts are all coming so rapidly, and I can’t type quickly enough to catch up.   But when I can force myself to slow down long enough to write it out, it always helps me sleep better.  Just a helpful tip for anyone else who has problems falling asleep sometimes.

I’m trying to rewind the last 30 minutes of thinking so I can get something of value written here.  

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about our life and what’s expected of us from a societal standpoint or a familial standpoint or a career standpoint, etc., etc.  I find myself getting more and more frustrated as I try to find the balance between our age, what that is supposed to mean, and what the reality is.  I’m tired of avoiding my age in conversations with anyone over 27, because I’ll be discounted (particularly professionally or spiritually - not by those who know me, but by those who are supposedly getting to know me) over it.  All of a sudden my thoughts or opinions lose value because I haven’t had enough years to formulate them yet?  It doesn’t make much sense to me.  But that’s really just the tip of the iceberg tonight.

There hasn’t been much time to read over the last few months, but I’m trying to make more time for blogs and books.  I can’t remember for the life of me where I read it recently, but somewhere someone writing about student ministry said something to the effect of:  “We’re not about creating a ministry to students; we’re about creating a ministry of students.”   That’s kind of a big deal.   It’s something I think the church we attend is striving towards, which is amazing, but it’s also a new, clear perspective for me.  

I was reading another blog lately who was discussing the way we share faith sometimes.   I’ve been really thinking lately about where the balance lies between living out your faith completely and verbally communicating what you believe.  Paul told Timothy that to watch his life and doctrine closely, and to perservere in both.  To me, that means they’re both important.  They have to match up.  Anyways, as I was contemplating the awkwardness sometimes of pointing out that a sheer love for Jesus is enough to motivate you to do absolutely crazy loving things, I read from a different blogger something to the effect of:  “Our message isn’t an information transfer,” meaning walking someone through the ABC’s of Jesus or an evangecube or whatever, “It’s a life transformation.”   I love that.  I’m not interested in anything less.

That leads me to an entirely other avenue of thought that has weirded me out lately.   As I mentioned multiple times in my last blog post, Josh and I are going through 3 years of marriage.   I heard it first in my high school psychology class and went on to hear much, much more in college that money is a huge source of conflict in relationships.   Therefore, I always expected it to be a huge source of conflict in our relationship.   It’s not.  I’m not saying we’ve never disagreed on money, but any “serious” arguments we’ve had on money since getting engaged in 2008, can in my opinion be counted on one hand.   I think that’s amazing.   Actually, I think that’s more than amazing.  I think that’s God. 

Please don’t read that and think we by any means have it all together.  I have insecurities that make for some ugly marital arguments, and both of us are still trying to figure out what an argument looks like in a Godly marriage.  It’s without a doubt a “needs improvement” area for us.  But not when it comes to money, which leads me to another school of thought…

Part of thinking about societal expectations and all that also has me thinking about how society as a whole seems to push us towards certain aspects of what we have now deemed the American Dream.  The house, dual careers, 2 kids, annual vacations, etc.  I’m not saying those things are bad, because they aren’t.  But I think the pursuit of them might be.  I think maybe the promise of the pursuit of happiness is a little fuzzy.    The pursuit of happiness is not the pursuit of stuff, because pursuing stuff is insatiable.  You’ll never have enough.  When you run out of the stuff money can buy, you’ll start focusing on all the things you want that money can’t buy.  The pursuit of stuff does not bring peace or happiness.  

The pursuit of happiness, true peace-filled happiness, is the pursuit of Jesus.  Wholeheartedly. 

So that has me thinking… what if we did?  What if we quit trying to micromanage our future and just focus on pursuing what is holy?  What would that life even look like?  Obviously, we have the Bible which is full of faith-filled people pursuing God.  But what would it look like today to be an average American family pursuing Jesus and only Jesus.  Not Jesus and all the stuff we want along with Jesus.  What if we trusted that gaining even an inch closer to Him is gaining more than enough?  What would it look like to be a woman, not a Christian celebrity, author, speaker, megapastor, etc., but just an ordinary woman passionately pursuing her extraordinary Savior? 

I don’t know the answers to those questions.  But I want to know them - and not just to know them, but to live them. 

Ah, see, it works.  I have freed up enough space in my head to finally get some sleep.  :)