Categotry Archives: Meanderings (look it up)

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.

So I wrote this song a couple of months ago, one that has become my own personal favorite–not because it’s the best.song.ever. or anything, but because of the broad sense of personal meaning it has for me.

Essentially, the song is about saying goodbye. It’s about making difficult choices to pursue one’s dreams, and about sometimes having to say goodbye to different people in our lives in the process.

I’m writing this, coffee in hand (well, not actually in HAND–that would make things rather messy for the laptop), looking out the windows of my favorite coffee shop at the freshly fallen snow still clinging to the tree branches, with a crystal-clear blue sky in the background. Yesterday’s snowfall was just enough to make things pretty, and not enough to shut down traffic. I chose this morning to sit facing outward toward the windows rather than inward toward the shop, just to take in the view. It’s a very nice reminder of what I love about this place.

Can I be honest? There are actually some things I miss about my life in the institutional church.

[Collective gasp from the crowd.]

I’m serious.

I guess with my particular story, it might make sense that I’d miss some things about institutional Christianity. If you read back through the history of this blog (or if you’ve been tracking from the beginning), you’ll remember that I didn’t walk away from this thing in a huff. It was more like God dragging me out by the feet while my fingers clawed the dirt. Even when I was doing house church, I was in such denial about where I stood with the institutional church that it took a real wake-up call for me to recognize that I truly was no longer part of it.