Have Cheap Luggage, Will Travel

Every wonder why you always meet 20 year olds that have all the answers to life and 30 year olds that feel like life has a leg up on them? I think it is because the older that you get the more you realize that you have no idea what you are doing.

Well, here I am fully admitting that I have no idea what I am doing and that the life I have is not the life I planned. I never thought that by the time I was closing in on 30 that I would not be married, still living pay check to pay check and not have a 5 year plan. So were did I go wrong? Let's see if we can figure it out.

I can't help but laugh when I think back to my little 18 year self setting out with huge plans and knowing that the college world that I was entering into was in for the shock of its life when it got a hold of me. Well, turns out that they were doing fine before I showed up and after I spent 7 years there, turns out that they are also just fine without me. So I learned my first lesson - The world doesn't need me.

Okay, how about a job? That is a smaller mountain to tackle than the world. When I got my first job out of college, I remember thinking that they had no idea what was in for them (even though I had already learned lesson number one.) I made a huge impact right away and eventually when that ended, turns out that they are still in business. Who knew? Lesson number two - Work does not need me.

So if my jobs don't need me, than maybe I can find a person that needs me. This also is good for a laugh or some pity if you think about it. I met a very nice guy who had a fine life without me and after 6 years that ended, turns out that we are just fine without each other. Life goes on. Lesson number three People don't need me.

I think my problem has been that I have been waiting on something else to depend on me to define my existence when the Lord was just waiting around for me to depend on him to define my existence. We talked this week in church about Ecclesiastes 1 (below) and I think it is the reason for my thoughts.

"Vanity of vanities! All is vanity." What advantage does man have in all his work which he does under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. That which has been is that which will be, and that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one might say, "See this, it is new"? Already it has existed for ages which were before us.

I think what I am saying is piddling around in the vanities of life (since everything outside of the Lord is really a vanity) and not really leaning on God is where I went wrong. So - I am a 28 year old, un-married, un-wealthy person who has no idea what she is doing and I think that is a good place to be.

Lately, I have been volunteering through with my church in downtown Dallas by partnering with a church that has literally transformed the crime rate in their area by buying buildings that used to be crack houses and turning them into ministries like half way houses and pregnancy centers. All this with a staff of 2 people. Very cool stuff.

When I have gone down there to volunteer, I have meet people that are incredibly receptive to hearing about Christianity and people that are much nicer to strangers that I ever am. Interacting with these people has really changed me personally and I have become addicted to serving because it is somewhat of a high. Everyday I see that the Lord is after balance in my life because I recently saw that my service for the Lord isn’t always going to be such a fairy tale.

In my latest trip to volunteer for the downtown church, we were painting some houses in the neighborhood that the pastor had started making relationships with. The houses were old and we had to scrape several layers of paint off before we could put some new paint on them. The girl I was working with was up on a ladder which was broken so I had to stand underneath it to brace it. We got to a spot that apparently birds loved to roost on because it was caked with bird poop. So she had to scrape off the bird poop and since I was bracing the ladder, it was coming down on me. As I was getting showered with little flecks of dried bird poop, I thought what a different experience this was for me as opposed to the other times.

The true heart of local missions is finding a way to really connect with somebody on a regular basis to be Jesus to them and the best person in this situation to be that for the people in these houses was not me but the pastor of that church. My service was allowing him to become closer to the lost in his neighborhood.

So service can change you but it isn’t all about you. It took a shower of dried bird poop to teach me that.

Anybody who has been reading these blogs knows that my life very recently has made a drastic change for the better. I have had an encounter with the reality of a relationship with The Lord and it has revolutionized everything about me. Have you ever had something like that happen to you? Don’t you just want to tell everybody? Your friends and family, the guys behind the counter at Starbucks – But do you always tell people?

I think it is rare to find a person that does not have one of these stories, but most people think things like, “My story is just like everyone else's” or “It takes too long to tell” or “People don’t want to know that stuff about me”. They never tell their story unless you through them in front of audience to give their testimony.

At Women of Faith, I have seen thousands upon thousands of women become Christians because the speakers from stage tell their stories of how God wooed them out of their junk with such brutal honestly you can’t help not being moved. For me the biggest place that I see Jesus in my world is in other people’s stories. The power of story is so amazing.

Here is my point. I think that this the biggest mistake that we make when interacting with one another. Never really honestly connecting. Talking about superficial nothingness until we are blue in the face because it makes us tired to think about getting into a deep conversation.

So tell your story every chance you get. You will never know whose life you will change.

Ask people about their stories. You never know who is just busting to tell you something that happened to them and you never know how it could change you.

And thanks to Jeremy who fearlessly had a deep conversation with me this weekend and reminded me of all this. Your story changed me.

When does a kid turn into an adult? Maybe it isn’t an age or a certain place in life. Maybe it is when you brain starts to change its thinking. Like, when did changing yourself or learning something new get so hard?

I find myself coming across habits that I have and wonder why anybody really wants to hang out with me. For example, I think I drive my roommates crazy with my incessant cleaning. It is not like they are dirty or anything, but I apparently can not stand the sight dishes in the sink. Or shoes in the living room. Or clutter on the counter. Does that sound familiar? Aghhhh! I am my father. When did that happen?

Anyway, I really like my roommates so I have spent the last month trying white knuckle my way through not cleaning the house every single day. It is not working. When I wake up in the morning, my first thought is dirty dishes. How sad is that?

Here is another one. I had discovered that I am a shameless flirt. Yes, yes. I like boys and boy attention and basically everything about the opposite sex. (Perhaps there is a reason that God placed my in an all female organization? :) ) I have really made a concerted effort lately to just be around boys instead of badgering them with my constant requests for attention. And… it’s not working. Every time I travel for Women of Faith, all of the crew is guys my age and I am sure that they have a good laugh about me over the lunch table because I flirt with them all.

I wish the Matrix movie was real life. Then I could just type into a computer, relationship skills. Press enter and wham! I could jump up with one fist in the air proclaiming, “I am confident in myself and do not need to flirt with guys!”

Why can’t life be that easy? Why does changing your self get harder every day? How can we stop ourselves from becoming our parents?

This is real adulthood ladies and gentlemen. The realization that life is hard and that you need something bigger than you to fix you.