Life is a not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.
~Charlotte Joko Beck
As a chaplain of a heart hospital and of a trauma unit, I encounter almost every day a patient who has recieved a distressing diagnosis, or who has had a major heart attack, or some other kind of serious medical issue, and has looked at me and asked, "Why me? Why is this happening to me?" Or a husband or or wife has just been told that their spouse, who just had a sudden major cardiac arrest, didn't survive it, and the spouse asks, "Why is this happening to me?"
Once, when I was a young, good looking pastor long ago, my wife and I were rear-ended by an old 1950's Buick that was built like a German tank. My mid-size Ford Futura suddenly became a compact car. After making sure that my wife and daughter were okay, I got out of the car to check on the driver that had smashed into me. And the question that came to my mind was, "Why me?"
The thinking behind this question seems to be: this stuff happens to other people, not to me or my family. I was once ministering to a young couple who's teenage daughter had just attempted suicide, and the young girl's chances of surviving the attempt did not look good. As I escorted the parents back to the daughter's ER room, the Mom said, "You know, you read and hear about this happening to other parents, but you never think for one moment it will happen to you."
As we travel through the mystery that is our lives, "Why me?" is one of the mysteries that we all face at one time or another.
But really, why is it that we think that "it"--whatever "it" is--won't happen to me? Or to mine? Am I that special of a person that this stuff really happens to others but not to me? What is it about me that makes me exempt? God loves me more? I'm a Christian? I'm a good person? I'm unique? I'm one of the blessed and fortunate? I read once that the majority of Americans believe that the reason for the existence of God is so that He will bless them, keep them safe, healthy and prosperous. Is that the thinking behind the question, "Why me?" The main task of God is to bless me in such a way that me and mine are too special to have anything like this happen?
As I travel through my life, I have come to the conclusion that I may be unique, but I'm not "special." Well, actually, unique is not the word anyone ever uses to describe me. "Quirky" is the word that they use. The advantage of being quirky is that it makes me a very easy person to buy for. Any Star Trek item, or book on philosophy, Quantum Physics, or Martial Arts will make me a happy camper. But being unique or quirky does not make me special. We are all unique human beings.
So, WHY NOT ME? I mean, really. I'm just a human being traveling through this journey of life like everyone else. Many times I have gazed upon a patient in the critical care unit, hooked up to a plethora of medical marvel technology that is doing the breathing for them, knowing that this patient very likely will not make it, and I think, "Why not me?" Being unique--or quirky--does not make me exempt from this. Being forgiven and loved by God and walking with Christ on a daily basis does not mean that I won't be laying in a bed like that. Or that I won't be standing there looking down on my wife or daughter who is fighting for their lives while I'm in utter shock, overwhelmed, my head and my guts spinning and my world collapsing.
Being loved by God does not mean we are so special that we are exempt from such things. I get disturbed when I hear Christians talk about driving, and being behind a slow truck on a 2-lane road and grumbling about it, wanting to speed around it but can't. Then they come up on a fatal car crash and the Christian thinks, "That would have been our car if I'd passed that truck like I wanted to. This is proof that God loves me!"
So did God love the people in the serious crash less? Does God's love really make us that special?
Why not me? Really, this is no reason why not me. Too many men my age, in their 50's, ignore the warning signs of their health and just plow through, thinking they are invincible. I'm not invincible, and acting like I am would not make it so.
If there was anyone in the Bible that comes to mind that was truly special, it would have be Job. He was so righteous that God even mentioned him by name in a conversation with Satan. Job 2:3, Then the Lord said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth...?" There is none like him on the whole earth?! Now that is special! And yet, look what happened to Job.
If God never promised Job that he would be exempt from suffering, tragedy or loss, what makes me think I'm exempt? So really, why not me?
I read once that on an average day on this little planet, 152,000 people die. And remember, that's an average day. I'm horrible at math, but I got this figured out to being about 4 people a minute. How do we beat those kinds of odds?
What God has promised me is to be with me...no matter what happens. Even when it feels as though He has abandoned me, He hasn't. When I'm so angry and hurt that I'm convinced He's not even listening to my prayers and pleas, He's listening. "He will neither leave you nor forsake you." Dt. 31:6
Does He promise to be with me through anything because I'm special? No. It's because of His love.
In this mystery that is my life, I have already been through things I never thought I would have to go through. And God has brought me through. And I'm sure there are still things ahead that will surprise, shock, and even whop me upside the head so hard it will make me spin. And God will see me through those, too.
Afterall, I'm nothing special. And hopefully that will keep God from mentioning me by name when He is having a conversation with Satan. (Grin)
Your Fellow Traveler,
~Steve
Thoughts, observations, and musings as I travel through life.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Sunday, April 21, 2013
A Bigger Bucket for the Journey
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.
~Charlotte Joko Beck
~Charlotte Joko Beck
The above quote is from my favorite Buddhist author, now deceased. As I’ve said before, I have a healthy respect for Buddhism. This is probably because Eastern philosophy makes more sense to me than Western. It’s less enslaved to the left hemisphere of the brain. We often forget that the Bible is an Eastern book as we interpret it from Western perspectives that are heavily influenced by Greek philosophy. Anyway, Beck wrote a book that has been one of the major influences in my life: Everyday Zen. The quote that appears at the beginning of these blogs came from it. Beck's down-to-earth observations and descriptions of what it means to live life I found to be very helpful.
Beck poses an intereseting question in her book: How much reality can you hold without it upsetting you? A lot of it has to do with how tightly we hold to our opinions, preferences and prejudices. I once heard the iconic comedian Jerry Lewis say in an interview that he is "very fanatical" about his opinions. I remember thinking to myself, "How many people around him has to be fanatical about his opinions?" We hold to our opinions, preferences and prejudices with the belief that they are true reflections of reality or the way reality should be, the way it is "supposed to be."
I find two kinds of people as I travel through life who have the hardest time "containing" very much reality. The first at the Controllers. Domineering people who are the happiest when they are controlling the lives of those around them. They believe their job is to be everyone's Authoritative Parent, and their main problem with you is that you are not the way you are "supposed" to be. I was raised by a very domineering, controlling step-father. He dominated everything we did: how we talked, walked, dressed, ate, sat down and got up out of the furniture. One time when I was around 12 he informed me that I was "walking across the room too heavily," and ordered me to "walk lighter." Our home--well, actually, his home that he let us live in with him--had to be a certain way. His way.
Maybe that's why my file at our deminational headquarters actually states that I have a problem with authority.
The other are the Conservatives and Liberals. To be either means that you take on not only their view of reality, but also their agendas, goals, issues, politics and political parties, as well as their anger and hatred (for the other side). Conservatives and Liberals like to dump a lot into our buckets if we sign on. There's a great deal of "how reality should be," how you should be, and arrogantly enough, how the whole bloomin' country "should be." And there's a great deal of anger about things not being as it "should" be (as in the Conservative motto: "We're fed and going to take our country back"). They have small buckets when it comes to how life is, and each tries to dump their baggage about it in our buckets. And as Conservative and/or Liberal Christians, we bring the Conservative or Liberal agenda into the church and make it part of the church's agenda.
One can be a follower of Jesus as long as Conservative or Liberal is how they percieve reality, apparently.
I have refused to sign on as either a Conservative or Liberal, to be identified as either exclusively. When people ask me, "Are you a Conservative or Liberal?" my answer is, "I'm neither, and I'm both." But I'm not a card-carrying member of either one.
Beck asks us the question: How big is your bucket? How much reality can you handle before it starts upsetting you? She makes the point that when our bucket gets "full," when we've handled all the reality we can--however much or little that is--then we try to dump our frustrations and anger about it in other people's buckets.
The most impressive statement she made along this line is that there is such a thing as divine truth, and YOUR opinions, preferences and prejudices are not it. My fellow travelers, THAT hit me right between the eyes. MY opinions, preferences and prejudices are not divine truth! I often assumed that God was where I got them from. But Beck reminds us that having opinions, preferences and prejudices are fine as long as we remember that that's all they are--they are just my opinions, my preferences, and my prejudices, and not God's.
For those of us who cannot hold much reality before it upsets us, Beck has a simple solution: Get a bigger bucket. This is advice that I've tried to adhere to as I live the mystery that is my life, as I pass through this life as a Christian, an American, a Baby Boomer husband and father. I pray that God will help me see those times when the issue is really that I need a bigger bucket.
It was Shakespeare who once said that there is more to life than can be contained in our philosophy.
Some days I don't think the real problem lies in that other person. Or in how I think things are. Or how I think things should be. Some days I think the problem is the size of my bucket.
Beck poses an intereseting question in her book: How much reality can you hold without it upsetting you? A lot of it has to do with how tightly we hold to our opinions, preferences and prejudices. I once heard the iconic comedian Jerry Lewis say in an interview that he is "very fanatical" about his opinions. I remember thinking to myself, "How many people around him has to be fanatical about his opinions?" We hold to our opinions, preferences and prejudices with the belief that they are true reflections of reality or the way reality should be, the way it is "supposed to be."
I find two kinds of people as I travel through life who have the hardest time "containing" very much reality. The first at the Controllers. Domineering people who are the happiest when they are controlling the lives of those around them. They believe their job is to be everyone's Authoritative Parent, and their main problem with you is that you are not the way you are "supposed" to be. I was raised by a very domineering, controlling step-father. He dominated everything we did: how we talked, walked, dressed, ate, sat down and got up out of the furniture. One time when I was around 12 he informed me that I was "walking across the room too heavily," and ordered me to "walk lighter." Our home--well, actually, his home that he let us live in with him--had to be a certain way. His way.
Maybe that's why my file at our deminational headquarters actually states that I have a problem with authority.
The other are the Conservatives and Liberals. To be either means that you take on not only their view of reality, but also their agendas, goals, issues, politics and political parties, as well as their anger and hatred (for the other side). Conservatives and Liberals like to dump a lot into our buckets if we sign on. There's a great deal of "how reality should be," how you should be, and arrogantly enough, how the whole bloomin' country "should be." And there's a great deal of anger about things not being as it "should" be (as in the Conservative motto: "We're fed and going to take our country back"). They have small buckets when it comes to how life is, and each tries to dump their baggage about it in our buckets. And as Conservative and/or Liberal Christians, we bring the Conservative or Liberal agenda into the church and make it part of the church's agenda.
One can be a follower of Jesus as long as Conservative or Liberal is how they percieve reality, apparently.
I have refused to sign on as either a Conservative or Liberal, to be identified as either exclusively. When people ask me, "Are you a Conservative or Liberal?" my answer is, "I'm neither, and I'm both." But I'm not a card-carrying member of either one.
Beck asks us the question: How big is your bucket? How much reality can you handle before it starts upsetting you? She makes the point that when our bucket gets "full," when we've handled all the reality we can--however much or little that is--then we try to dump our frustrations and anger about it in other people's buckets.
The most impressive statement she made along this line is that there is such a thing as divine truth, and YOUR opinions, preferences and prejudices are not it. My fellow travelers, THAT hit me right between the eyes. MY opinions, preferences and prejudices are not divine truth! I often assumed that God was where I got them from. But Beck reminds us that having opinions, preferences and prejudices are fine as long as we remember that that's all they are--they are just my opinions, my preferences, and my prejudices, and not God's.
For those of us who cannot hold much reality before it upsets us, Beck has a simple solution: Get a bigger bucket. This is advice that I've tried to adhere to as I live the mystery that is my life, as I pass through this life as a Christian, an American, a Baby Boomer husband and father. I pray that God will help me see those times when the issue is really that I need a bigger bucket.
It was Shakespeare who once said that there is more to life than can be contained in our philosophy.
Some days I don't think the real problem lies in that other person. Or in how I think things are. Or how I think things should be. Some days I think the problem is the size of my bucket.
Your Fellow Traveler,
~Steve
Monday, April 15, 2013
Traveling Stories
I am very good at doing funeral services, if I do say so myself. It's simple really: collect the deceased's stories and share them. When I meet with the deceased's family, I tell them ahead of time that I want to hear the stories about their departed loved one, the "famous" stories that most everyone in the family knows, "Remember the time when..." Family, loved ones and friends at the service love hearing the stories. "That sounds just like him/her!" What better way to celebrate a person's life than to share the stories of the person's sojourn?
Our life is a collection of the stories that we create and accumulate as we travel through life. I'll end this post with one of the most "famous" stories about me from my childhood.
The importance of stories, and how they relate history, dawned on me one night as I was listening to my Granny Melton tell the "homestead stories." My father's ancestors homesteaded a 150 farm in the Ozarks, outside the town of Calico Rock, Arkansas, in the 1860's. The original cabin was still there in the late 1970's when I visited there. Hopefully it still is. My grandmother would tell the stories that her grandmother passed on to her about carving out a life and raising generations on that Ozark farm. I realized that once Granny Melton passed away, those stories going all the way back to the 1860s would also pass away, so I started writing them down. I also wrote down Granny Melton's stories, and then her son's stories--my Dad's. My Dad loved to tell his stories. My daughter would tell you that I'm just like my Dad in that way.
My mother's side of the family was very tight-lipped. Very few stories were ever shared. When I would ask my maternal grandparents about their parents and grandparents, I would be told, "We're AMERICAN! That's ALL you need to know!" My Mom shared almost nothing as well. The topic was closed.
But by then I had a whole notebook of stories I wrote by hand about my family going back to the 1860s, and in 1995 I decided to add my stories. Since then I have kept a daily journal, now filling several notebooks. My daughter will inherit all of this.
Our life, our family history, is best communicated through the stories. The Bible authors knew that. Ask a Sunday School class of kids to explain the meaning of Romans 7. Blank faces. Then ask them to tell the story of David & Goliath. Fun! For all those reading this post, I encourage you to write down your stories to pass on to your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and on. If you can, be the collector of the family stories. You are collecting the stories, the adventures, the history of the family's generational travels. It's the stories that brings the history to life. Like I said, start with your stories, write them down, and then collect the others.
One of my stories:
I was five years old in 1959. (As you can tell from the photo, I was a snappy dresser even back then. LOL). My parents were living in a little apartment complex in Wichita, Ks. I was wearing my prized possession: my Have Gun Will Travel gun & holster set. For those of you under the age of 50, Have Gun Will Travel was a hit TV western that ran from 1957 to 1963. Sort of a James Bond of the Old West. I was sitting on the sidewalk, adjusting my roller skates. Why was I a cowboy wearing roller skates? Had a gun, had to travel, I guess. My Mom was at the kitchen sink, looking out the window at me as she washed the dishes.
I remember looking up, and here came the dog. A mutt, average size. Head down, ears back, showing his teeth, and coming right at me. The Russians have an old proverb: "When a wolf shows his teeth, he is not smiling." This dog had been terrorizing the kids in our little complex, snapping at them, growling, nipping at their heels. Mom saw the dog coming as well and made a bee-line for the front door. The dog snapped right in my face. The dog did not know two important things about me. One is that a loose dog that is snapping at me makes me furious! Enraged! Still does. He snapped in my face, then turned around to walk away.
Flooded with anger, I grabbed his tail, pulled him towards me, and right on top of his haunch, I bit into him as hard as I could. I sank my teeth into him for all I was worth! This was the second thing the dog did not know about me--I was a biter. I was always in trouble for biting my sister, my cousins, the neighbor kids, even my parents--whoever crossed me. I remember the dog swinging his head around to look at me, and I also remember the look of utter shock on his face. He let out a loud yelp, tucked his tail, and ran. I watched him take off, then went back to adjusting my skates. My Mom had reached the front stoop of our apartment by then, and told me years later that when she saw me bite the dog, she sat down on the front stoop and laughed so hard she literally wet her pants.
For a long time afterwards, whenever one of the other parents would see my Dad out front watering the lawn or whatever, they'd say, "Hey, Gill. There's a dog over at our place scaring the kids. Can you send Steve over to bite him?"
Don't lose the great stories from your life's journey. Write them down and pass them on.
Our life is a collection of the stories that we create and accumulate as we travel through life. I'll end this post with one of the most "famous" stories about me from my childhood.
The importance of stories, and how they relate history, dawned on me one night as I was listening to my Granny Melton tell the "homestead stories." My father's ancestors homesteaded a 150 farm in the Ozarks, outside the town of Calico Rock, Arkansas, in the 1860's. The original cabin was still there in the late 1970's when I visited there. Hopefully it still is. My grandmother would tell the stories that her grandmother passed on to her about carving out a life and raising generations on that Ozark farm. I realized that once Granny Melton passed away, those stories going all the way back to the 1860s would also pass away, so I started writing them down. I also wrote down Granny Melton's stories, and then her son's stories--my Dad's. My Dad loved to tell his stories. My daughter would tell you that I'm just like my Dad in that way.
My mother's side of the family was very tight-lipped. Very few stories were ever shared. When I would ask my maternal grandparents about their parents and grandparents, I would be told, "We're AMERICAN! That's ALL you need to know!" My Mom shared almost nothing as well. The topic was closed.
But by then I had a whole notebook of stories I wrote by hand about my family going back to the 1860s, and in 1995 I decided to add my stories. Since then I have kept a daily journal, now filling several notebooks. My daughter will inherit all of this.
Our life, our family history, is best communicated through the stories. The Bible authors knew that. Ask a Sunday School class of kids to explain the meaning of Romans 7. Blank faces. Then ask them to tell the story of David & Goliath. Fun! For all those reading this post, I encourage you to write down your stories to pass on to your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and on. If you can, be the collector of the family stories. You are collecting the stories, the adventures, the history of the family's generational travels. It's the stories that brings the history to life. Like I said, start with your stories, write them down, and then collect the others.
One of my stories:
I remember looking up, and here came the dog. A mutt, average size. Head down, ears back, showing his teeth, and coming right at me. The Russians have an old proverb: "When a wolf shows his teeth, he is not smiling." This dog had been terrorizing the kids in our little complex, snapping at them, growling, nipping at their heels. Mom saw the dog coming as well and made a bee-line for the front door. The dog snapped right in my face. The dog did not know two important things about me. One is that a loose dog that is snapping at me makes me furious! Enraged! Still does. He snapped in my face, then turned around to walk away.
Flooded with anger, I grabbed his tail, pulled him towards me, and right on top of his haunch, I bit into him as hard as I could. I sank my teeth into him for all I was worth! This was the second thing the dog did not know about me--I was a biter. I was always in trouble for biting my sister, my cousins, the neighbor kids, even my parents--whoever crossed me. I remember the dog swinging his head around to look at me, and I also remember the look of utter shock on his face. He let out a loud yelp, tucked his tail, and ran. I watched him take off, then went back to adjusting my skates. My Mom had reached the front stoop of our apartment by then, and told me years later that when she saw me bite the dog, she sat down on the front stoop and laughed so hard she literally wet her pants.
For a long time afterwards, whenever one of the other parents would see my Dad out front watering the lawn or whatever, they'd say, "Hey, Gill. There's a dog over at our place scaring the kids. Can you send Steve over to bite him?"
Don't lose the great stories from your life's journey. Write them down and pass them on.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Mystery Number One: Family (and the Resulting Baggage)
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.
For when David had served God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his fathers and his body decayed. ~Acts 13:36 (NIV)
Free will and predistination are two sides of the same coin. I believe in both. However, I tend to take a "larger view" of predistination. I do not believe that it was just chance or "luck of the draw" that I was born when and where I was. One time I was driving through the back streets of Saltillo, Mexico at night with a van load of college students. Looking out the window at some kids playing in the street, one of the students said, "My life would have been so different if I'd been born here." It doesn't take much to change what our lives could have been. I believe that it was by design that I was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1954 rather than in a small village in China in 1954 or 1654 or 2654. I was born to be an American Baby Boomer. Well, no complaints there. We created the greatest pop music history.
Nor was it by chance, but by design, that I was born into the family that I was born into. Here is where I had problems with "God's design" for decades. Don't get me wrong--I love my family, especially my Mom. But God could not have made me the product of a more dysfunctional group of people if He'd tried. "Life made better through chemicals" was the motto. Chain smoking, alcoholism, and prescription drug addiction flowed like a flooded river through my family. So did extra-marital affairs. And add to that a step-father who was not only a raging alcoholic, but physically abusive. I lived in terror from the second grade till I was 17, and endured a lot of beatings, not to mention verbal abuse. My Mom, co-dependent and totally self-involved, allowed it as well as endured it along with my sister and me.
I would look at other kids and their families and wonder, Did God love me less? Why didn't He put me in that family instead? Why was I sentenced to spending a good portion of my life dealing with being an abuse survivor, plagued with both fears of abandonment and of being overwhelmed, along with anger, insecurity, and a fear of everything? Is this God's love? Honestly, for the majority of my life I thought that I got the short end of the stick by being born Steve Gillihan. For me, that was one of the big mysteries of my life--why was I born to be ME? It was a sore point in my spiritual life.
Honestly, I have more baggage than United Airlines.
On the other hand, I have never met anyone who does not have baggage from their family. Some have more than others, but we all have it. My parents generation had a simple solution: Forget about it and go on. Yeah, like THAT works! When we suppress and repress, it's like shoving food to the back of the fridge. It may be out of sight, but after a while, it stinks like crap.
It has been through God's love and grace that I have spent my adult life unpacking, sifting through, and sorting out the baggage. In the process, God has brought a great deal of healing into my life. I have seen Him do miracles. But He has also lead me to "do the hard work" of facing the stuff in my life. He has brought the right authors I've needed at just the right time, brought the right teachers and counselors, and gave me an incredibly understanding and supportive wife. During the past year and a half of Clinical Pastoral Education, I have finally stopped believing that being me was the short end of the stick. God has worked all things together for me to attain a love for myself, confidence, and fear's ever-lessening hold on my life.
I no longer ask "why did God do this or that," or why He "alllowed this or that." He does not explain Himself to me anymore than He did to Job. And I can believe and serve a God who feels no requirement to explain Himself to me. That's faith. So now instead of asking "God, why did you allow...?" I ask, "Okay, what do You want to do with this in my life? How can this help me serve Your purpose in my generation?"
Because nothing is wasted in God's economy. Not even baggage.
Your Fellow Traveler,
~Steve
For when David had served God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his fathers and his body decayed. ~Acts 13:36 (NIV)
Free will and predistination are two sides of the same coin. I believe in both. However, I tend to take a "larger view" of predistination. I do not believe that it was just chance or "luck of the draw" that I was born when and where I was. One time I was driving through the back streets of Saltillo, Mexico at night with a van load of college students. Looking out the window at some kids playing in the street, one of the students said, "My life would have been so different if I'd been born here." It doesn't take much to change what our lives could have been. I believe that it was by design that I was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1954 rather than in a small village in China in 1954 or 1654 or 2654. I was born to be an American Baby Boomer. Well, no complaints there. We created the greatest pop music history.
Nor was it by chance, but by design, that I was born into the family that I was born into. Here is where I had problems with "God's design" for decades. Don't get me wrong--I love my family, especially my Mom. But God could not have made me the product of a more dysfunctional group of people if He'd tried. "Life made better through chemicals" was the motto. Chain smoking, alcoholism, and prescription drug addiction flowed like a flooded river through my family. So did extra-marital affairs. And add to that a step-father who was not only a raging alcoholic, but physically abusive. I lived in terror from the second grade till I was 17, and endured a lot of beatings, not to mention verbal abuse. My Mom, co-dependent and totally self-involved, allowed it as well as endured it along with my sister and me.
I would look at other kids and their families and wonder, Did God love me less? Why didn't He put me in that family instead? Why was I sentenced to spending a good portion of my life dealing with being an abuse survivor, plagued with both fears of abandonment and of being overwhelmed, along with anger, insecurity, and a fear of everything? Is this God's love? Honestly, for the majority of my life I thought that I got the short end of the stick by being born Steve Gillihan. For me, that was one of the big mysteries of my life--why was I born to be ME? It was a sore point in my spiritual life.
Honestly, I have more baggage than United Airlines.
On the other hand, I have never met anyone who does not have baggage from their family. Some have more than others, but we all have it. My parents generation had a simple solution: Forget about it and go on. Yeah, like THAT works! When we suppress and repress, it's like shoving food to the back of the fridge. It may be out of sight, but after a while, it stinks like crap.
It has been through God's love and grace that I have spent my adult life unpacking, sifting through, and sorting out the baggage. In the process, God has brought a great deal of healing into my life. I have seen Him do miracles. But He has also lead me to "do the hard work" of facing the stuff in my life. He has brought the right authors I've needed at just the right time, brought the right teachers and counselors, and gave me an incredibly understanding and supportive wife. During the past year and a half of Clinical Pastoral Education, I have finally stopped believing that being me was the short end of the stick. God has worked all things together for me to attain a love for myself, confidence, and fear's ever-lessening hold on my life.
I no longer ask "why did God do this or that," or why He "alllowed this or that." He does not explain Himself to me anymore than He did to Job. And I can believe and serve a God who feels no requirement to explain Himself to me. That's faith. So now instead of asking "God, why did you allow...?" I ask, "Okay, what do You want to do with this in my life? How can this help me serve Your purpose in my generation?"
Because nothing is wasted in God's economy. Not even baggage.
Your Fellow Traveler,
~Steve
Monday, April 8, 2013
Meet the Traveler
I have always felt like that Bible passage that says, "I am a stranger in a strange land," like I am a traveller passing through life. I have lived many places during my 58 years. By the time I was 25, I realized I had lived in over 20 different dwellings. No, I was not a foster child. My mom & step-father had us moving a lot at night. I would ask, "Why are we moving at 10 o'clock at night?" They would respond, "Because it's cooler." When I was a teen-ager I realized: they were staying one step ahead of the landlord they owed back rent to. For some reason my family always bounced back to Batesville, Arkansas. Since that is where I spent the most accumulated time growing up, I have adopted it as my hometown.
Since the age of 25, I have moved around a lot on my own, pastoring churches. Every place I moved to felt temporary, and I would wonder, "How long will I be here?" I felt like Abraham on the way to the Promise Land. No place felt permanent. No place really felt like "home." Even my favorite place--Colorado--felt temporary. When I moved to the Denver area, I instantly fell in love with Colorado, and I wanted to stay there until I died. But still that haunting question was always with me: "How long will I be here?"
Now I'm in the Oklahoma City area, and I know that this is temporary. I am a "chaplain student," that is, I am in a two-year program called CPE--Clinical Pastoral Education, and OU Medical. I am a chaplain intern at OU Med and at OU Children's Hospital. I am a part-time chaplain at two local heart hosptials. I love being a chaplain. I feel as though I am coming into my own, and I know that this is what I am to do for the rest of my life--be a hospital chaplain.
Okay, so I've got my career settled for my remaining years, but I know that when the program is over, I am moving on to a new location, someplace where I will be a full-time chaplain. So I am still the traveler. This blog is about my thoughts and obsevations as I travel through this life.
Thought number one: Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.
My life has certainly been a mystery. Things have happened to me that I never expected, never thought would happen. When you are young, you think about what your life will be like. Then as your travel through your life, following the roadmap your have set out for it, you stop and look at how different it is, and you think, "Okay, this is interesting. This wasn't part of the plan. How do I fix this?"
So, this blog is about the Mystery that is my Life, and the quetions that come with mystery. Questions like, "Why did God allow this to happen?" As I chaplain, I get that one A LOT. And, "Does everthing happen for a reason?" Many believe that everything does happen for a reason. Yeah, I have questions about that. Questions about meaning, purpose, pain, suffering, joy, blessings, family, free will, predistination, choice, and what just hits us upside the head.
I have been called an unorthodox Christian. I love philosophy, Qunatum Physics, I have a healthy respect for Buddhism, and I am a committed follower of Jesus Christ. My observations will not always be orthodox. But they will be honest.
~Your Fellow Traveler,
Steve
Since the age of 25, I have moved around a lot on my own, pastoring churches. Every place I moved to felt temporary, and I would wonder, "How long will I be here?" I felt like Abraham on the way to the Promise Land. No place felt permanent. No place really felt like "home." Even my favorite place--Colorado--felt temporary. When I moved to the Denver area, I instantly fell in love with Colorado, and I wanted to stay there until I died. But still that haunting question was always with me: "How long will I be here?"
Now I'm in the Oklahoma City area, and I know that this is temporary. I am a "chaplain student," that is, I am in a two-year program called CPE--Clinical Pastoral Education, and OU Medical. I am a chaplain intern at OU Med and at OU Children's Hospital. I am a part-time chaplain at two local heart hosptials. I love being a chaplain. I feel as though I am coming into my own, and I know that this is what I am to do for the rest of my life--be a hospital chaplain.
Okay, so I've got my career settled for my remaining years, but I know that when the program is over, I am moving on to a new location, someplace where I will be a full-time chaplain. So I am still the traveler. This blog is about my thoughts and obsevations as I travel through this life.
Thought number one: Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.
My life has certainly been a mystery. Things have happened to me that I never expected, never thought would happen. When you are young, you think about what your life will be like. Then as your travel through your life, following the roadmap your have set out for it, you stop and look at how different it is, and you think, "Okay, this is interesting. This wasn't part of the plan. How do I fix this?"
So, this blog is about the Mystery that is my Life, and the quetions that come with mystery. Questions like, "Why did God allow this to happen?" As I chaplain, I get that one A LOT. And, "Does everthing happen for a reason?" Many believe that everything does happen for a reason. Yeah, I have questions about that. Questions about meaning, purpose, pain, suffering, joy, blessings, family, free will, predistination, choice, and what just hits us upside the head.
I have been called an unorthodox Christian. I love philosophy, Qunatum Physics, I have a healthy respect for Buddhism, and I am a committed follower of Jesus Christ. My observations will not always be orthodox. But they will be honest.
~Your Fellow Traveler,
Steve
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