Have Cheap Luggage, Will Travel

Once I did a Bible study with a bunch of older women about how to balance disappointment in life and your relationship with God. I remember telling them that I had no major disappointments and didn’t really connect with the study. They looked right at me with eyes heavy from years of unrealized expectations and told me to wait a while. They were right…

My mom got engaged this week. That means that everyone in my immediate family will have been married before me…everyone. I can already feel the all too familiar looks of pity from my family that I will have to endure at her wedding.

For a long time, I have wanted to be married and raise a few kids. So, why would God have allowed all of my family that privilege but not me? Also, why would God put a burning desire in me for something that He is barring the path to?

These questions produce two warring reactions in me – anger over my disappointment and a quiet understanding that God’s plan is better than mine. Fortunately, my relationship with God won’t let me jump off the cliff of frustration no matter how much I want to wallow in self-pity. However, it bothers me that I am even asking these questions in the first place because it makes me think about the true source of my satisfaction…

If I am unsatisfied, than what would make me fully satisfied? What about you? I’m sure that we could make a long list together – getting married, better job, even “spiritual” things like becoming a missionary. But what happens when those dreams turn into unrealized expectations?

In the past I have dealt with it by dumping my dirty little life for a shiny new one – moving to a new town, getting a new job, looking for a new relationship, even buying a new shirt…I was constantly searching for satisfaction but coming up empty. My problem in this never ending search is that I followed myself to the next place. We have more to do with our own un-satisfaction than we realize.

So, where then can real satisfaction be found? One of my favorite authors on this subject says it best, so I will default to him.

“We all make gods out of what we take the most pleasure in. Christian Hedonists want to make God their God by seeking after the greatest pleasure—pleasure in him.

We do not mean that our happiness is the highest good. We mean that pursuing the highest good will always result in our greatest happiness in the end,” – John Piper, Desiring God

I am always grateful to discover when my convictions and thoughts don’t line up because it provides a chance for re-alignment to what I know to be true despite my emotional state.

Read: Acts 20:24
Ask: Sometimes looking at the expanse of the course put in front of you can eliminate tunnel vision to the uncomfortable circumstances of today. What do you believe is the course that the Lord has set out for you?

Read: Isaiah 45:19
Ask: If you are unsure of your course, what do you think this verse says about that? Are you really listening and seeking to find answers?

One of my favorite parts about people is finding out what makes them who they are. Learning about the parts of their past that have crafted their future and how they understand the world…People are far more interesting and unique than they give themselves credit for. I think one question that always reveals this is asking how they find the Lord in their lives.

Their answers are as different from each other as night is from day but I have never had someone tell me that they find the Lord in church. Instead they usually describe people and places “out in the world” where they have encountered the living God.

Of course these people have experienced God at church, but for whatever reason it’s not special enough to mention. It might be because we have turned church into a regular rendezvous with God where we expect Him to show up like a hair dresser for our previously scheduled appointment. It is instead the times when we don’t think to look for God that take our breath away. The unexpected encounters…

For example, I feel peace and focus consistently in coffee shops and art museums. For some reason God just built me to love those things. I always look for unexpected encounters there.

Last time I went to the Dallas Museum of Art, I found a modern art exhibit that was a room whose ceiling was covered in yellow incandescent bulbs. The all-white room and everything in it was bathed in a sepia colored light that made you feel like you were in a dream. It was so thick that when kids came in the room they tried to swim in the light and people reached out to touch their friends to make sure they were real. It’s hard to explain how cool it was…I stayed in the room for a while watching people’s reactions to the exhibit. The simple beauty of a colored light bulb was incredibly impactful. There is so much of God in the world if you choose to see it.

So, you can learn a lot by asking people where they find the Lord in their lives. I have learned not tap my toe in annoyance when I don’t see the Lord, but instead to always look for Him. You’ll never know where you will find him or worse, where you are already missing him.

Also, I have learned to embrace the times where I don’t see God as a gift. I tell the girls in my home group all the time that you can never know light without darkness. Contrast brings an amazing amount of clarity for me.

All that to say, I think my pursuit of God has gotten easier as I have realized that the promise is not that we would arrive at constant state of nirvana-like happiness but instead that we would get more God as we walk the path laid out for us. I am fully satisfied with that.

Read: Psalm 63:1-5
Ask: What do you think it means to be satisfied in God?

Read: Isaiah 45:19
Ask: What does this verse say the result of your seeking will be?

I really don’t like Texas and have an even deeper disdain for Dallas. DFW culture consists of shopping and big flashy everything. While there are many redeeming parts to our fair city, there is much that makes me want to move into a one-room shack in Seattle.

What’s worse is that on top of its shallow pursuits, it’s just not pretty. We never waste an opportunity to cut down a tree and throw up another strip mall (because we really need another one). Even when you do get out of the city, the woods are nothing more than scraggly sticks surrounded by dirt as far as the eye can see. Not exactly something that inspires me.

Recently in an effort to get away and getting some thinking time, I went camping with some friends darn near the middle of nowhere. Groesbeck, TX. We went to a friend’s land, threw up some tents and froze our rears off in the cold. For some reason, conversation over hot chocolate and a campfire seems that much more fulfilling. On the other hand, there are some parts of the middle of nowhere that are not so cool like using the woods as a bathroom. But more about that later…

The best part of the trip came the next morning when we all piled in the truck to visit my friend’s home church. The trip was a 30 minute adventure through the back country of scraggly sticks and dirt but for some reason that day…it was beautiful.

Everywhere I looked I saw God and it created worship in me. I cried happy tears the whole way there, all the way through the service and even during the cheesy solo that could have been a Garth Brooks song.

After I came back from Groesbeck, it was like I was able to see things in a different way. I saw God in things that would normally start me on my “Dallas sucks” rant. Instead of rolling my eyes, I would venture to say that began things the way that God saw them.

The clouds looked more majestic, people in pursuit of the Dallas status quo broke my heart instead of annoyed me and I just loved being in the world.

I get the feeling that my world was always this way, but for whatever reason, the eyes of my heart were blind to what God was doing around me. I bet that blindness had something to do with my own choices.

Anyway, God is pretty good about letting you get to the end of your thoughts and then showing you how your way is just…dumb.

So I leave you with this thought,

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened,
so that you will know what is the hope of His calling,
what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,
and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.
These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might.”
- Ephesians 1:18-19

Read: Thomas Merton Quote
Ask: What might you be missing out on because you are trying to make the world about you?

Read: Matthew 16:17
Ask: What does this verse tell you about your own ability to open the eyes of your heart?

Read: 2 Corinthians 3:14-18
Ask: What are you doing to create opportunity to open the eyes of your heart?
(Hint: This could be anything from a place, book or a person. God built us all differently and you should look for what inspires you.)

Four years ago my life was very different. My life then was about … well, me. There is not one single decision that I made that was not somehow wrapped up in helping me find happiness. Funny how pursuing your happiness at all costs is a very unhappy pursuit.

Since then Christ pulled me out of my gutter and I have happily worked to turn my life into service for others. That single minded approach to my time has kept me very busy. Leading a home group, mentoring a 14 autistic girl, volunteering at an inner city VBS and on and on… My life by design is poured out into others. Service to others creates in me satisfaction that lets me know I was created for it. I say this not out of arrogance but out of concern because I have discovered an unintended problem to a life of service.

When everything in your life is about somebody else, you tend to ignore the monsters in your own head until something comes along to shed light the stuff you didn’t even know was there. Dark corners dressed with the cobwebs of time have been hiding issues that have flown under the radar for years. Their discovery produces an uncomfortable angst that settles into my days as I struggle to find the right choices between two unfairly matched opponents.

The good in me is nothing more than a whisper. Just planting thoughts here and there designed to make me think. Never demanding, never making it hard for me to make the wrong decision. Just asking me to think and pay attention to what I might normally ignore.

The bad in me is more like a roaring lion looking to devour anything good in me that would choose the Lord. This side in me makes it extremely difficult to make the right choice even though I know it is the better one. A quote from C.S. Lewis helps put into words what I am discovering about myself…

"We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." - C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

I find myself wanted to trade myself in for a less confusing model all of the time. How is it possible to be 30 and 4 all at the same time? What I do know that it is okay to not be okay, just not okay to stay there. Looks like I’m going to start heading back to CR.

Read: 1 Kings 19:9-13
Ask: Why do you think God would choose to speak to Elijah in a whisper?
Ask: How can you apply this situation to your life?
Read: Romans 12:2
Ask: What areas of your life have you not been renewing?