Category Archives: Meanderings (look it up)

I think the next two posts may very well go hand in hand, although they will deal with different topics. That’s all I’m gonna say about it now, to bait you to keep reading…heh heh…

It takes awhile sometimes for God to get through to me, but in looking at a series of events that have unfolded in my life over the past several months, I see a common thread: all of them seem to be exposing my control issues. I am an admitted control freak, and have even referenced it multiple times tongue-in-cheekly on this here blog. But I suppose it’s now time not just to admit it, but to deal with it.

I’m still pondering some of the things I wrote about in the last post, about being guided by the God-given desires of our hearts to find a sense of direction. The past couple of days, I’ve identified one of those deep desires in a fresh way. Those who know me would probably roll their eyes back and say, “DUH!”, but I suppose that even though I’ve known this about myself, it has come to me as sort of a fresh revelation:

I thrive on creativity.

…He is risen indeed.

It’s a bit surreal for me this morning. Even though I have not associated myself with institutional Christianity for a number of years, I realized this morning that this is the first Easter (Resurrection Sunday, for the purists) in decades that I have not actually been involved in a structured church gathering. When I lived in Tulsa, we celebrated in house church. Even since coming here, I managed to find myself in congregation on Easter Sunday for the past few years because I was helping out with worship. Last Easter was my last day to lead worship at my friends’ church plant, as I sort of broke in their new worship leader they’d hired. So this is literally the first time I’ve had an Easter Sunday with no responsibilities since I was probably in my early teens. Kind of nice, kind of relaxing, but kind of surreal, also.

Someone said once (or many times, but maybe I just heard it once) that a sign of maturity is when the stack of questions in your mind begins to get larger than your stack of answers. If that’s true–I must be growing up fast.

When I started off this journey of faith as a youngster, I admittedly had a lot more answers than questions. Knowledge puffs up, but presumed knowledge can be even worse. I had a lot of passion, but not a lot of wisdom, and somehow I thought my passion would overcome my lack in other areas. I did some good things, but I also hurt people along the way.

Has anyone else on Facebook had their feeds filled with people expressing thankfulness for something different each day through the month of November? Longest. Meme. Ever.

I didn’t choose to participate in that exercise this year, not because I’m ungrateful for at least 30 things, but mainly because I didn’t want to risk being self-indulgent with it. In other words, I felt that by the time I started scouring the outer reaches, I’d be expressing thanks for things no one on my friends list really cared about.

I’ve noticed that like so many other people, I have trouble living in the present. I spend a lot of time just thinking, even when I’m doing something else, and in my mind I’m usually either reliving something in the past, or I’m planning (and/or worrying) about the future–thinking about what I have to get done, or whatever. I have to discipline myself to live in the moment, and often my self-discipline is lacking.

Fair warning: I’m about to start rambling, and I have no idea where I’m going to end up when I’m through. I’m processing a lot of different thoughts right now, mulling over a lot of things, some more personal than others, and sometimes I write just to get the thoughts out where I can look at them a little bit. Just be aware that this post may end up being about nothing in particular.