Scary.

Ya know what's scary about prayer?

Sometimes, God answers it.

If you tell Him you want to stop treasuring control, He will wrestle it right out of your tightly-clenched fists.

If you tell Him you want to live present to Him, He might take away all you knew of your future.

If you tell Him you want to understand grace, He'll put you in a place where you can't do anything but receive.

If you tell Him you want to depend on Him completely, He'll knock everything else out from under your feet.

If you tell Him you want to live in surrender, He will carry you to the altar.

Scary? Yes.
Good? Absolutely. 

So, after a long, prayerful process, guided by mentors, filled with encouragement of friends from all over, I've decided to leave Denver Seminary and the counseling program after this semester, aka in three weeks. If you're interested in the story, I'd be happy to share it with you over a beverage of your choice. Anyhow, it begs the question, What next?

What do I want to do when I grow up?

What a great question. One to which I wish I knew the answer.

It's funny.

First, I wanted to be a meteorologist.
And then a marine biologist.
And then a journalist.
And then a bioethicist.
And then a lawyer and politician.
And then a music teacher.
And then an abolitionist.
And then a counselor.

And now I'm finding that I don't really want to be any of those things.

I mean, I could start a whole other list.

Coffee-shop owner.
Worship leader.
Pianist.
Businesswoman.
Overseas missionary.
Administrator.
Wife.
Mom.
Campus minister.
Professional Scrabble player.

But I don't want to do anything, per se. I just want to be.

But how do you do that in a world that insists on defining yourself by what you do?

And furthermore, how do you reconcile the incongruence between being who God made you to be but also needing to pay bills? What does that look like this side of heaven?

Work has been broken in life after Eden. Instead of allowing us to express our identity as the Image-Bearers of God, it has become our identity. One that is suffocating. Like a noose around our necks. Every major or career I've pursued thus far has felt like it expresses certain parts of me but chokes out others.

Maybe I'm asking the wrong questions.

Maybe it's not about finding the dream job.

Maybe it really is being. Being grateful. Being present. Being alive. And accepting the incongruence of work after the Fall. Living in tension. Sigh.

It doesn't answer my question. But is it an answer I really need? To use the counseling cliche "the process is the point." Sigh.

The way of trust.

“The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment. The reality of naked trust is the life of the pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise.”

-Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust

Waiting...

"To wait open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life.
So is to trust that something will happen to us that is far beyond our
imaginings.

So, too, is giving up control over our future and letting
God define our life, trusting that
God molds us according to God's love and not according to our fear.

The spiritual life is a life in
which we wait, actively present to the moment, trusting that new
things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own
imagination, fantasy, or prediction.

That, indeed, is a very radical
stance toward life
in a world preoccupied with control."

~Henri J. M.Nouwen