Ghosts of Christmas past

So, Christmas has come and gone once again. Celebrating it for the 27th time, I still feel there is much more mileage to get out of the richness of the occasion. Each year now feels to be just beginning to scratch the surface. This year has been such an unexpected and profound journey of both personal reflection and simultaneous outward projection of what Jesus means to me.

I still find it difficult to separate the past from the present though.

Over the years I have grown into a richer and fuller understanding of God's amazing breadth and depth of love through Jesus. Particularly at this time of the year though, I still find myself struggling to separate the hope of things to come from the pain of previous loss.

Honestly as much as I love Christmas, I have realized the last few years that I get slightly uneasy around this time of year. The big picture stuff is all in place for me. I fully get the gravity of this season. An all powerful being who made everything we can see, touch, smell, feel, etc., deciding to come and be "WITH US" is truly the most exceptional thing that has ever happened since we were formed out of some dirt (guys) and human bone (girls) way back when, when all THIS came into being. Beyond that broad stroked appreciation, sifting through Christmas on a very ME level has very mixed emotions.

I became more aware of the WHY last Thanksgiving. I spent it with my sister Rebecca and her beautiful family in Florida. We began talking about how at a very young age nearly ever year I would have these random health episodes on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. A couple times I had critical asthma attacks that would land me in the emergency room. Another year I got the flu so bad that my family, being completely overwhelmed by the amount of vomit being emitted from my tiny body, accidentally overdosed me on suppositories! If you don't know what a suppository is, I'll spare you the details. The overdose led to me having a severe allergic reaction to the drugs within, sending my minuscule little 5 or 6 year old body into random spasms, and my neck would crink over to the side semi-permanently on and off for hours at a time. This naturally led to me and my family spending the "funnest" day of the year in the emergency room again.

You might think it was all a case of bad luck. Why Christmas over and over again? What a coincidence!

Right?

My sister and I started talking about this and came to a more concise conclusion than mere chance. You see, the Christmas before all this started happening a much more traumatic and catastrophic thing happened to me and my family. My parents, who had been fighting and barely hanging on to their marriage, decided to separate a few weeks before Christmas. My Mom took me and my sisters to my grandparents in California last minute where we spent our first Christmas without Dad. This obviously would have been sad and dramatic at the time, but I was too young to really soak in what was really happening. I'm sure for the rest of the family it was a terribly difficult time.

I actually remember it being really fun spending Christmas in the cold for the first time. I remember laughing,singing and dancing with my cousins who I didn't know well but was able to grow in love with them over that Christmas. I remember putting popcorn on a string and putting it around the massive Christmas tree my grandparents had in their giant living room. There was no way we could do this in Hawaii due to ants and cockroaches. I was amazed that such commonplace critters "go away" in the winter in other parts of the world. I remember my Uncle got my cousins a train set and a R/C car track. I was so jealous, but managed to get a few turns in on the R/C track. I remember my sisters and cousins put together a talent night of sorts, which consisted mostly of them lip syncing and dancing horribly to Paula Abdul (those songs are burned in my memory decades later, and I don't even like Paula Abdul). I'm pretty sure video footage of said talent night exists somewhere out in the vast galaxy of cardboard boxed Lujan memorabilia.

As I sat and reflected with my sister last Thanksgiving I realized this was and is my first cognitive Christmas memory. The year before our family took a trip to Washington and Whistler around Christmas time, and I only have a few snapshots of memories from that trip. One is being in snow for the first time in my life (to this day I have only been in snow maybe one or two other times). The other clear memory is being pushed down a massive flight of frozen stairs by my very caring and attentive sisters and smashing face first into a car bumper at the bottom of the hill. I remember coming to consciousness a few moments later and my dad carrying me through the snow back to our cabin and telling me I was going to be ok.

But these memories are without any clear, classic Christmas imagery. No going through our stockings Christmas Eve, no gathering around the tree and opening presents Christmas morning, no carols, no hot chocolate, no decorating the tree, none of that kind of stuff.

That all came the next year, minus one incredibly important detail...

DAD!

My first cognitive Christmas memories are all great and warm and fun, but they are missing arguably the most important piece of the puzzle. I didn't know it at the time, and didn't really put that piece together until last Thanksgiving, but as much as those memories with my grandparents and my cousins were amazing, I think deep down I knew something was drastically wrong. My sister shared that knowing now the full trauma and disconnect that occurred over my parents divorce, the cause of all those physical reactions at Christmas time were directly related to the deep psychological and spiritual trauma I experienced when Mom and Dad split up that fateful Christmas in the late 1980s. My little boy body was trying to catch up with the pain that was occurring under the surface.

I found myself in that moment realizing, as we discussed quite lightheartedly and cavalier the actual heartbreaking reality of my childhood, that she was absolutely right and that my current tension and struggle with Christmas in the present are completely intertwined with those haunting memories. I am finding myself also more and more compelled to understand that I, like everyone else on this planet, have a responsibility to make a choice to either allow these things to be reconciled or to allow them to brew and boil year in year out and live out of that reality.

Sometimes it feels that there is no other reality to live out of. "It's all I've ever known" we tell ourselves.

But... as a believer in the real story of Christmas I need to take a sobering approach to such viewpoints. As much as I have allowed this Jesus to change my life and the way I view the world around me, I also still need to allow him to impact my past and where i've come from. Remembering that God came to be WITH ME when I was thirteen and desperately needed to know the love of a father, It seems so logical NOW, so elementary. It changed me then and it continues to change me now.

The thing is, it doesn't erase what occurred THEN. Those memories are still real and the pain and trauma attached didn't go away just because I prayed a prayer in an old kim chee factory almost 15 years ago in Kalihi Valley. I knew that God cared then, that he wasn't removed or unaffected by my pain. I found him to be someone who spoke clearly into the deepest parts of my soul, and that he cried and grieved those awful moments of my early childhood.

It feels like the only natural response we can do when we have these encounters with the Emmanuel God is to just toss up all this hurt to him and hope that we never need to revisit them again. Those moments when he shares with us that he was there in the midst of all our hurt and pain feels like a giant release valve that we hopefully never have to release again. We like to believe that a spiritual sort of memory wipe occurs.

I'm not quite sure this is what God has in mind though. He isn't the kind of God who wants to completely remove me from my past. As much as he hates that certain things have happened to me, he is BIG enough and WITH ME enough NOW to redeem all of that into a beautiful story that reeks of his faithfulness and healing power. Not a healing power that requires a spiritual and emotional lobotomy, but one that is fierce and wild enough to stand with and hold you while you wail, kick and scream about the deepest and darkest corners of your past. To me, this is the Christmas story at it most raw and vulnerable.

"Long lay the world in sin and error pining, till he appeared and the soul felt it's worth."

This is why Christmas really should be the most wonderful time of the year. All the things we do, which some Christians would say are pagan, can be redeemed FULLY to scream and shout this amazing truth.

Let the lights be bright, let the trees be glitzy, let the tinsel shine, let the stockings bulge, let the turkeys glisten, let boxes under the tree overflow, let carols be sung sweetly... let this all happen and more if they are done in such a way as to remind what God proved to us all those centuries ago.

Let it impact us NOW, and let it impact us for the THEN, for the things we wish never happened.

The choice I make now won't be made for me. I can pretend the symbolism around me this season points to the truth of who God is. To pretend that I live in a way that says I am whole and I am found.

Or I can choose to allow God to dig deep into who I am NOW through my past, present and into my future, radically shaping and forming me through things I want so badly to have never occurred. Through this God shows me that he is still true, that I can still know that this is the truth of who I am NOW even though sometimes it doesn't always feel that way.

This year I broke out of a funk that I have tried to break out of many times. I decided not to let my own expectations of what I wish happened THEN to affect the way I loved others around me NOW.

Gift giving is something that my family wasn't terrible at, but we weren't really great at either. My mom would make a massive effort every year to give us as much gifts as possible, but it was always a stretch to say the least. The last few years I would sit and hope that others would come and rescue Christmas for me. This year, with a help of a few friends, I broke out of that and decided to take on the reality of what God modeled for me through Christmas:

To give out of a sense of love and sacrifice and not out of obligation or guilt.

What a privilege it is to live life out of that reality!

We have these types of choices to make all the time, to live out of the old reality or the new reality. Christmas is a great, exaggerated season that confronts whether we believe and live out of the reality that God came to BE WITH US.

I gave out more presents this year than I ever have. I spent an exponentially greater time than ever before crafting and laboring sentiments to tell others that I'm grateful for them in my life. I also received gifts as well. One in particular that really deserves more gratitude.It's not a gift that you open up, freak out and jump up and down in screaming Jubilation over. It should be more like that, and if you're anything like me it doesn't always get expressed that way. Sure, it has its brief expressions of over the top appreciation and happiness, but deep down I know that it deserves more.

This Christmas I am pleased to say that the greatest gift I've received is learning how to appreciate more the one I've already received. It's the gift that keeps on giving, it's the gift that makes me scream in joy and the one that walks me through dark sorrow.

JESUS, the God who is WITH.

When the credits roll

Following Jesus is amazing. Not just talking ABOUT him and what he said and did thousands of years ago, but actually following him in a real and personal way, day in day out.

It's such a privilege.

At the same time, following Jesus is extremely difficult though... isn't it?

Denying yourself...
Humbling yourself...
Over and over again...
So that OTHERS might be blessed... it's no small task.

I feel like you can break down the christian "conversion" experience into two broad categories or phases. The first one is the one we hear about all the time. The good stuff. The gospel message of Jesus Christ dying to make all things right. It's applicable to every human being who ever was and ever will be. The cross resonates with all of humanity because their is an internal sense in all of us that we are broken. That brokenness is undeniable across the entire world and all throughout history. It might not be the exact feeling or process of restoration with every person who has responded to this gospel, but universally it carries the same effect and tone.

I was lost and now I'm found.

This is the stuff we like. It really is good news! It draws humanity in, and when it's understood, it almost seems too good to be true. When we realize the consequences for our decisions and our sins, when we actually feel the weight of it and realize that something can be done beyond us to change that... well, there really are no words to describe it.

We use the word GRACE, and it truly is amazing.

When we realize this grace, we're stuck with questions like...

"How could this actually be?I'm so undeserving!"
"How could anyone love me like this, let alone the creator of all things?"

We can feel perplexed, and although we don't understand it all, we are captivated and drawn in by the sheer madness of a kind of love that can actually make us whole.

The second phase I feel like is realized by many but partaken in by very few. This is the phase when you realize that the reconciliation you've experienced, the one that took your breath away and swept you off your feet, isn't intended for a solitary moment of awe and wonder. When we see that the price Jesus paid wasn't JUST TO GET US OUT OF THE DOGHOUSE. It's easy to treat that moment of Jesus on the cross as the POINT of everything.

Like we were created just so we could be forgiven.

We want to treat that moment like we want to savor that last scene in any cheesy romantic comedy we watch where the guy travels across the country, drops everything in his life and professes his love in front of a full airport terminal. The girl is faced with a choice, and we marvel and wait on the edge our seat as she decides on whether or not she accepts. The moment she does, he sweeps her off her feet, they lock lips and everyone sighs and reaches for the conveniently placed handkerchief to wipe away the tears of joy.

Love isn't really like this, though.

Well, at least for me anyways, it hasn't been.

You never get to see reality in these movies - the time when these same two characters that are in that moment caught in the middle of a fairytale are later arguing on where to go to dinner on their anniversary and it turns into a massive fight and they spend it alone. The time when the mortgage looms insurmountably and there isn't enough funds in the bank account to cover it. The time when the guy is sick of taking out the trash and the girl is tired of being overlooked by football.

Reality doesn't crescendo the way we'd like life to.

Maybe I'm bitter or jaded, but I've never made out with a girl in an airport terminal. I've never even come close to anything like that. I came close once to dropping everything in my life and driving 18 hours to profess my love to a girl. I was visiting my sister in Florida during thanksgiving and thought I had met the girl of my dreams. She was gorgeous, smart, said all the right things and I was smitten. I asked my sister if I could borrow her car to drive interstate so I could lay it all out on the line. I imagined showing up to this girls house, pulling up her driveway, getting out of the car and spewing out my feelings for her on her victorian style porch. I imagined her being breathless and having her welcome me in for left over turkey with her family. I'd seen scenes like this in countless movies, so I started telling myself that it's MY time. Time for MY dreams to come true. In the end though, I didn't go. I held back and played it cool. I decided against it and no gas station encounter in the rain was had. Nothing to write home about.

I'm still waiting for that "moment" I suppose.

The disappointment caused by these moments, or lack thereof, makes me wonder things like what if I wait for a while for it to "happen" to me and it never does? What if I fantasize about it for so long that I miss what's happening right in front of me? I start to wonder if I'll be able to survive life without the dream of being wrapped up in something so grand like that.

Like what I see in the movies.

I'm starting to see my relationship with Jesus in a really similar way. This second phase I mentioned is not really like the first phase at all. I desperately want it to be though. I want to have Jesus sweep me off my feet and to feel like everything will be ok again. I want to feel like I did when I was 13 and opened my heart to him for the first time. When I realized that God was the father I SOOOO desperately had been craving my whole life. I want that moment to be played over and over again, to just keep hitting rewind on the remote control of my life.

I like that moment. I long for that moment. Not just a memory, but as something that I still want more of... because that moment is a good one. It was real then. It meant something then and somehow now it feels like a fantasy, all in the same breath. I want that moment much more than the moment I'm having right now. The moment I'm in right now doesn't feel anything like that moment, or the many other one's I've had where I was in awe of the grace of God. This moment right now feels...

Well it feels boring to be honest.

It feels boring and at the same time I feel overwhelmed by it all. A weird paradox of being overwhelmed by the nothingness of life. These moments are the ones that scare us away from continuing on in this "conversion" experience, this second phase. It's what we do after the airport terminal scene that scares us more than the lead up to that moment. What do we do when life is "normal" again?

Terrifying thought really.

You see Jesus does call us into this grand, sweeping, epic masterpiece. The first phase is that EPIC. And well, the second phase is too, but it doesn't always feel that way. It's because the second is less about the "moment" of finding Jesus and more about the journey of following him.

Jesus on the cross is what we want to see right before the end of the movie.That moment is something we long for because we all need it. We all need and long for that kind of love.

Following Jesus is different than falling in love with him though. Following him requires a lot more commitment. Jesus teaching us how to love our enemies and have unity amongst those in our church. Jesus telling us to turn the other cheek. Jesus telling us to sell everything we own. Jesus telling us to be generous until it hurts. Jesus asking us to deny ourselves daily and follow his example of complete sacrifice and surrender.

We treat these things like the monotonous bit we walk out of during the credits after the movie is over. It's sad though because the people making the film are the one's that deserve the credit for what we just enjoyed, but rarely do they get the acknowledgment they deserve.

The key grips, the best boy grips, the dolly grips, the caterers, the prop directors, the sound engineers... you know, the one's who actually make the magic happen.

Without them, there is no story. And without doing the things Jesus calls us to in following him, there is no REAL story. Not according to Jesus anyways. Hitting the rewind button on him on the cross over and over just isn't what he had in mind.

I've been observing a lot of heartache and distress in many of the marriages around me. I'm sure that these current marriages aren't any different than one's I was around when I was younger. I guess I am just much more aware of the "realness" involved in cleaving to another human being for the rest of your life.

At 27 years old, its staring to feel like I am becoming a endangered species amongst my closest friends that I grew up with. I am on the "never married" list, and there doesn't seem to be many others there with me. The funny thing though is that I don't actually long for it like I used to. I don't wake up feeling like I'm missing out on the most important thing in the universe by not being married right now. Don't get me wrong, a LARGE part of me deep downs wants to wake up tomorrow and have another warm body laying next to me, but the last 2 years have opened my eyes hugely to the calamity that is marriage.

Many divorces, much more than I'd like to cope with, have gone down with some of my closest friends in the world. Many other marriages seem to be hanging on by a thread. All my married friends and family tell me, in great detail, how difficult it really is to walk this thing out.

They also tell me how worth it is...well some of them do anyways. Some of them don't even have to tell me in words how worth it it is - the beautiful children running around laughing and singing make it painfully clear.

It's super obvious to me now that the pain in marriage can produce some of the most beautiful things imaginable.
It's also super obvious to me that the pain in marriage can also be unbearable.

The thing i'm trying to convince myself of more than anything else is that following Jesus is worth it. Not just worth it when I feel like it, though. Telling him I love him when he's removed the boulder crushing the life out of me isn't really all that difficult. Telling him I love him when he asks me to forgive that person who consistently hurts me is another story.

I don't want to fall in love with Jesus in the airport terminal and not still be in love with him 20 years later when I need to take the trash to the end of the driveway at midnight.

I want him to know that once everyone else has left the theater and there is no one else around that I'll be there to clean up all the popcorn on the floor and scrape the used bubble gum from under the seats.

I want to treat the MOMENT of HIM accepting ME the way it deserves to be treated. Treat it like it demands a life long covenant of being faithful to him no matter what happens.

I want to let that commitment produce beautiful things in my life that would not be possible on my own.
I want him to know that I'm in for the long haul not just because it's the "right" thing to do...

But just because I love him.

Here's the situation

*Written on August 5, 2011

I currently am, as I'm writing this, on a greyhound bus service from Los Angeles to Sacramento. The journey that got me to getting on this bus is nothing short of a modern day catastrophe,so I'll spare you the details. The contents of this bus ride will suffice for enough human drama anyhow. I'm 45 minutes from my destination, the destination being FAMILY and the most gorgeous girls I know alive on this planet.

Ellie, maile and chloe. ( I know other one's as well, one is Florida and unfortunately won't see her this trip)

My nieces who I never see have spurred me on through what is unarguably the most horrendous traveling experience I have ever had, which is a big statement considering my life to date. The past 5 days would best be described as a train-wreck similar to the one I recently saw in the delightful move "Super 8".

The past 12 hours have been a bit of a highlight though.

Today's journey began at 11 am in Santa Ana Orange County. I was nervous from the get go because anything that could of gone wrong literally had gone wrong up to that point. The bus that I was supposed to catch the night before at 10 PM decided it didn't want to show up, so I was a little skeptical to say the least that today was going to go swimmingly. The 11 am bus did show up but it was "FULL". They took 2 passengers on and left 30 FUMING angry Orange County passengers behind, I was number 29 I suppose. An hour later a bus arrives and takes us to the LA depot where I'm sure that the bus transfer to Sacramento I was meant to get on would of left, but much to my "surprise" (short lived) that bus was also running late and I didn't miss it.

I get on the bus and find out that there is power for laptops and free wi-fi! Cha ching. First real break all week. I have watched Colbert report on hulu, facebook chatted and skyped with friends on and off all day, pretty stinking cool actually.

About 3 hours into the journey we come to a slow death crawl and for the next 3 hours inch our way through the desert at 5 MPH. People on the bus start getting restless. I find myself sitting next to a latino young man, probably in his early twenties. In between playing dr. dre and t-pain on his phone (no, not through his head phones, straight up out of his speakers) I get to listen to him talk to his girlfriend and family about smoking weed and other unmentionable subject matter. We get to talking here and there and he tells me he lives in Oregon and has a medicinal marijuana card. He laughingly tells me how easy it was for him to get in his home state.

Liberal "freedom" working on all cylinders there.

The guy was a bit much really, but at the same time he was alright.

About 6 hours into this fiasco of a drive people start complaining that the driver is going too slow, not just murmuring though, straight up yelling from the back of the bus to the driver way up front so he could hear them. The driver at one point pulls over and says

"Does anyone want bottled water from under the bus?"

Everyone darts their hands up and says...

"Hell's yeah".

After driving 5 mph through the arid dry desert in the middle of the summer, it was more than understandable. He pops back on the bus a minute later and says...

"Sorry, false alarm. We ran out!"

Profanities in all sorts of accents are heaved his way. Latino, african american, straight up white dudes, even the nice quiet chinese couple sitting behind me chime in a little discontentment under their breaths. People would occasionally throughout the trip walk up to the front of the bus and express their anguish to the back of his head and he eventually got on the loud speaker and said...

"If one more person disturbs me while I'm driving... I'm gonna pull this bus over." Hilarious!

7 hours in and we finally stop for a food break. This particular stop was meant to be 3 hours into the ride, so everyone stampedes off. The town is called Coalinga and the smell of cow manure permeates your nostrils from the moment you step off the bus. I got some taco bell, the other passengers acquire their meals at the variety of other classy establishments you can find at a Coalinga rest area. I'm pretty sure that food wasn't the only goods procured during the pit stop. I'll let your imagination wander on that one.

Everyone hobbles back on for what will be my last leg, but for some just their halfwas as they go on to Portland, Seattle and even Vancouver...

UNIMAGINABLE torture for those ones.

I noticed a delightful older black man earlier in the trip and brushed by him at the food stop. Something stuck out to me about him from the moment I stepped on that bus. In the middle of the insanity he seemed to be able to just sit back and laugh at it all... nothing seemed to affect him too greatly. I was getting close to being able to finally do that and as I got back on the bus I looked at where he was sitting and I saw a little black book sitting on his seat. It was open and I could see where he was reading in this little black book.

One of the epistles written to the early church, probably challenging the reader to recognize what's important in this life, to not sweat the small stuff and to endure much harder circumstances than the ones I had just been through.

Its funny how things pile up and how quickly, when we take a deep breath and look around us, those things that are piled up kinda just topple over and become so... trivial and elementary.

Patience, family, gratitude, stability, joy.

These are all things that God is desperately wanting me to appreciate more and prioritize above other trivial things such as...
money, comfort, food, girlfriend/wife, entertainment, stimulation.

Really my life is like this bus ride in more ways than I'd like to admit to.

Slow, tiring, insane, humorous, exhausting, expensive.

But the thing is that this bus is taking me somewhere I know is good, it's taking me to people that I'd die for in a heartbeat. The destination is so worth the journey. Every inch I get closer to these people I love melts away the moments previous. Despising the journey is just so not worth it.

God have mercy on me.

Dangerous curves up ahead

Every once in a while I find myself in a place where the road is so completely unknown up ahead I totally resign to trying to figure out what's next. These moments are more a rarity and I think the older we get, the more and more rare they become. Because mostly we want to be familiar with what's happening and in at least be in some form of relative control.

Some people like adventure, the thrill of always living on the edge of the next big unknown. To some people to even think of living that sort of way makes them feel nauseated and light headed. I probably lean more toward the former while still appreciating some sort of comfort and familiarity. Even people who live crazy adventure filled lives develop familiarity with the unknown.

Their constant is change and they become uneasy if things become static.

I am currently in no doubt the most unfamiliar season of my life. Very little of what I do currently evokes any semblance of recognizable feeling or developed patterns. Treading in new waters is exciting and terrifying in the exact same step.

The last 7 years or so in Australia has been a wild and exhilarating ride. I've had a few moments of utter terror and momentary insanity trying to figure what the heck I was doing on the opposite side of the planet. But really those moments have been small in number and for the most part I have been forming a nice niche' in my relationships, in my ministry, and in my calling and identity as a son of God. I have liked what I do and l have liked the people I do it with. There has been lots of change in the people I have done life with and although I am accustomed to that change now, it doesn't necessarily get easier. I'm learning to love the privilege and the torment of reestablishing trust with people on a regular basis, keeps me on my toes. I am realizing that change is constant in life, especially for a guy like me who really wants to always be moving forward.

It's funny though, because even as strong followers of Jesus we can often ask God to keep moving us forward in life and then still act genuinely surprised when God brings situations into our lives that require us to actually change. It's almost like we tell God that he can change certain things that we are willing to sacrifice or give up. We make this little mental sub-conscious list of things that we are willing for God to ask us to give up or move on from. All the while there is an even stronger list of things on a even deeper level of sub-conscious being established that we are unwilling for their to be change in. What happens then is when change DOES come we are shocked and surprised because we have asked God to change our lives but we really haven't done the due diligence internally on what that actually means.

It makes me think about Job. The guy had it all! Wealth, success, family, friends. He also had rich relationship with God but in a snap everything in his life was suddenly gone, vanished, ripped away. The one thing he was unwilling to see change or be taken away though was his unwavering belief in a God who deserved everything in his life. His friends and his wife didn't make it easy for him, he had every reason to look at God and accuse God of changing. It would totally of appeared that way to Job. But he says "though he slay me, I will still trust in him. I will maintain mine own ways before him." Job 13:15

The dude was resilient to say the least.

The danger in change is that we don't allow ourselves to see the forest for the trees. Instead of taking time to appreciate even the most painful circumstances we decide to instantly accuse God that HE has changed.

I feel that I have come dangerously close to pointing my bony, wretched little finger at God and cursing him because I don't understand what's going on. I have been here in this season for longer than I would like. In the past I feel that I have bounced back so much quicker to set backs. I've been asking myself why this season has felt so much more challenging than others?

Why does it feel like God has changed?

I'm beginning to see the forest for the trees... slowly. The reason for all of this is that God is wanting to trust me more. He wants to give me more than I currently have had in the past. He wants to use me in new ways. He wants to give me more of who he is. The change that is required ,IN ME, in order for that to happen is immense and the awkward tension isn't felt by God.

It's felt by me because I am the one who is needing to change, not God.

So this brings up the age old question...

Is it worth it?

Is the tension worth bearing again?

Do I really have the guts to say things like though he slay me I still will trust in him?

Do I really want God to brag about me to satan?

It's like I'm on a road to somewhere. Somewhere great, somewhere beautiful. Sometimes I enjoy the drive, I put my hand out the window just to feel the wind against my palms. The scenery outside the window is captivating and the destination doesn't feel as impressive as the moment. I look in the rear view mirror and see the sun setting behind me and feel accomplished that I have gone somewhere today.

Sometimes the journey is grueling and it's cold and foggy and I can't see anything out my window. Sometimes I am less familiar with the drive and none of the roads sign make any sense. Sometimes the destination is the only thing that matters to me and all I can do is complain about how long the drive is taking.

Right now it feels like all the road signs are saying "Dangerous curves up ahead." Like the drive is uphill and I am stuck in the fog. It feels like I've had to slow down just to survive and not fly off the road. I normally like to drive fast so it's killing me be on such a windy drive. I feel like right now, in this moment God is telling me that the curves aren't for forever and that if I keep driving through the fog, it will eventually clear. He's calling me to keep going up the mountain past the clouds and bear the cold.

I was reminded of the many drives I've taken up the volcano on Maui growing up. The drive up Haleakala is a long, windy and cold journey and it's tradition to drive up early in the AM to witness one of the most beautiful sunrises to be seen anywhere on the planet. EVERY SINGLE TIME I used to do it I would complain as me and the group of friends I would go with would get up at 4 AM, pile into one of our cars ( always with no A/C or heating), drive up the switchback drive and huddle together in the pitch black at 10,000 feet with the one blanket we brought for all of us. It would always seem that it wasn't worth it until the first sign of pink would peek itself out. All of the sudden the hundreds of people gathered would come to a small moment of silence as the sun rose over the crater of the volcano and the sky was filled with more vivid color and beauty than you would even know how to describe or understand.

So I have decided to keep driving, cause this road is taking me somewhere.


(Haleakala sunrise, yeah... it's this amazing!)

There's no "I" in team... but what about "we"?

There's something about unity that makes it so hard to grab a hold of. Sometime's we trick ourselves into thinking it just comes naturally to those that are serving God in some sort of ministry. We like to view it as a free gift that God just gives away, or at worst like a starbucks gift card we buy last minute for someone we forgot to get a gift for. No time or effort necessary.

We can treat team building and even our core relationships like this sometimes. That the pieces will just fall into place and those that we have the strongest connection with will just come our way and fall into our laps.That kind of unity will probably not last and at best is most likely very superficial.

It's very easy as a leader in ministry to gather people around us that agree with everything we have to say. Anyone who doesn't agree with us right away is automatically 'unteachable' or too difficult to work with. We treat the word disagreement as a threat to momentum and even at times as an attack on us personally. Therefore the core group of people we end up gathering around us in this scenario, unfortunately, has very little diversity and will seriously lack creativity. As our team grows and people begin to be attracted to the life that is being manifested in our ministry, we can look around and do a spot check of the unity within our ministry at any given time and genuinely feel that it is strong.

The reality in that scenario is that the unity we think we have, is really no unity at all. All we've achieved is a carbon copy of ourselves and a small dose of what God actually desires to do through our lives.

We need people around us that bring the most out of us. People who challenge us and ask a lot of questions. People who are good at things we're not good at but don't make us feel silly for not being as good as they are at those things.

These people don't always just appear out of thin air. These kind of people are a bit harder to come by. They're the ones that might not vote the same way you do, or listen to the same bands that you do, or dress the same way you do. They are the kind of people who at first may drive you absolutely crazy. They are the ones who may take a lot more effort to establish that trust and cohesion we desperately crave to have in our teams as leaders and the people we want to have in our lives period.

Jesus modeled this really well didn't he?

He gathered those who were brown nosers and just wanted to impress him and those who we're struggling to probably get out of bed in the morning. He seemed to want to gather a team of people around him that would need to value each other in their differences, people that didn't see eye to eye on everything. The one thing he did require of all of the 12 is that they did agree on one thing... that they follow him at all costs. He knew that they wouldn’t always agree. He also knew that if they agreed on the one thing that mattered most, there would be nothing that they couldn't achieve.

A rainbow is beautiful not because each color is brilliant on it’s own, but because they shine together in harmony. Let us strive for unity in diversity. It is not natural and it is not cheap, which is a good thing because neither is the Kingdom of God.