Don't you worry bout a thing

Jesus tells us we shouldn't worry.

He says we shouldn't worry about what we're gonna eat or drink or wear. Something about the birds not having to, so neither should we.

I have to admit, I never really saw much application in that. I figured this was one of those parts where Jesus is talking to someone else. I'm not a big worrier, and I was born in a place where most of us, one way or another, aren't going hungry. I've been to a place where I had to ration bottled water because you couldn't just stick your glass under the tap, but that was temporary. For me. As for what we wear - yeah, some of us worry about that. Especially right before laundry day. But even then, it's not so much a naked-in-the-cold thing as it is a style thing. Or for others, a smell thing.

And so I found myself a few months ago unusually stressed out about life in general. It's a shame, too, because I was stressing out in the midst of what's actually a pretty peaceful time of abundance. Well, it was a time of abundance until yesterday, when I took my car in to have the heat looked at and had to get a ride home in a loaner while they held it on $1800 bond to fix my heat, timing belt, water pump, gasket, basket, triscuit, and some other stuff. So it's really just a time of peace, not (financial) abundance.

Even before the car problem, I was starting to worry.

We get used to worrying. Maybe we like worrying. Life is a story, and the story has to have a problem, a challenge. If it doesn't, it's boring. We need something to overcome or work toward. So sometimes we think up new stuff to be unhappy about, to work toward, to worry about. We'll even worry about the stuff Jesus explicitly told us not to worry about.

For me, it's the transition of life and my life purpose that have been stressing me out.

See, I've got this idea that God's got this grand, perfect purpose for my life, with all of these perfect experiences, challenges, and opportunities that have given me wisdom and taught me skills for some unique purpose, just for me.

I've had plenty of time to think about this, to graph it, outline it, map it, describe it, transcribe it, clarify it, add to it, reduce it, boil it, simmer low for fifteen minutes and remove from heat and - oh, we're not making rice?

There's no recipe to figuring out your purpose, I don't think. Because despite all of the thought and all of the process and all of the skill-building experience/challenge/opportunity, I'm still in this period of transition, and I still can't for the life of me explicitly state my purpose.

People ask me, now that I'm back from Puerto Rico, what I'm doing next.

Like I planned ahead or something.

Like I've got a five year plan, or even better, a master plan.

Five years ago (yikes, almost six), I graduated from college. With no five-year plan. Just... find a job. Get benefits. (... profit?)

I still don't have a five year plan. So I really can't tell people what I'm doing next.

For a while, that frustrated me. Stressed me out. Worried me. And I embraced the worry. Loved the worry. Because at 28, being unable to explicitly state my purpose was a wee bit embarrassing. I mean, come on, I was a missionary. I was doing big stuff for The Kingdom. I must have left it for ... something.

When I got home, I found this silly little temporary job (full time, with benefits) that I viewed as a stopping place, an oasis with a paycheck. I thought I might be out of there after a few weeks. Two or three months tops, before bounding off to the next huge, God-pleasing thing.

But then I began to see problems with that thinking. First, I was overlooking the amazing blessing of my current situation. Full time job. Benefits. Relevant work. No, not exactly what I'd pictured, but it was two or three months after I landed the job that I finally realized how much of a blessing it really was, and how thankful I had failed to feel. Second, if life is a story with something to work toward, obsessing over my specific, unique purpose and my next step in that purpose makes this whole story about me. I have to do what's best for me. (So I can best serve God, of course.) I am learning that life - and the story of life - is much better when I am just a role player in God's much bigger, better story.

Now, I don't reject the thinking that God has given me some abilities that I ought to consciously put toward his service. Certainly, it's good to take note of those things and pursue opportunities to put them into practice. But as soon as "finding your purpose" becomes a point of stress - or worry - for you, you have taken it too far. I fear that the focus on passions and purpose can put people (especially college students and twentysomethings) in a place where they are frustrated, waiting on God to deliver some instructions and epiphanies that will never come. Very seldom in the Bible does God yell down instructions from way up above. And they're usually at incredibly pivotal moments.

This whole line of explicit purpose-thinking translates to me trying to plot and produce my own livelihood for tomorrow. Now, I haven't done an exhaustive Biblical study to analyze to what degree we as humans are responsible for good planning in regards to realizing our full potential and God-given life purpose. Yet. (Although I did read Purpose-driven Life a long, long time ago...) But Jesus' words in Matthew 6 lead me to believe that I shouldn't be losing sleep over where God might be sending me for my job, for my career, or for my ministry.

Jesus says we shouldn't worry about our food, our drink, our clothes ... our livelihood. A little further down he reminds us: "Seek first his kingdom, and his righteousness, and all these things will be given unto you." That right there? That's your purpose.

Time to go back

Okay. Power blog. It's getting late and I need to go to bed because

I'm flying back to Puerto Rico tomorrow.

This was my third trip home, and it will be my fourth flight to Puerto Rico. It never gets easy to say good bye, but I think I do understand them a little better.

It's good to come home. Good to be around family and friends and snow, and separate from the pace of life and work in Puerto Rico, from salty air and daily routine, so I can go back and approach it anew, refreshed. I saw lots of people here. I missed many more. When you have finite time (and it's all finite, isn't it?) you just can't plan it all. That's no break. That's no vacation. That's not refreshing. So - sorry if I missed you.

The inevitable question people ask is - how much longer will you be there? If you've read this blog in the last few months, you may have sensed that I won't have a very specific or concrete answer. There are times when I'm sure I'll be finished there this fall, and there are others when I think - I'm doing good work, I feel useful, I'm growing, why ever leave?

It's a tough decision to make. It's almost certainly tougher than the decision to go there in the first place. It's not one I've got my mind fully made up on. I know I'll be there at least through this fall. Maybe longer. Maybe not. Professionally, I should stay. Personally, I'd like very much to return here, to normal.

But of course, "normal" is gone.

The decision to stay or go (or what to do or where to move or when to go or what to wear), in my unprofessional, non-seminary-trained opinion, is not the same as following or abandoning the will of God. To stay there, I can see where He would use me. To go home, I can see where he would use me.

It would be easy to obsess over it. Regardless, It is good that I have been there, and it is good that I am going back now. There's a lot to do.
Lots of camps to plan
Staff to train
Kids to reach
Places to explore
Stuff to learn
Advice to follow.

Let's go back.

One Year, Today

A year ago today, I arrived at CDC a little after midnight, tired and sweaty, with no soap. Dave gave me some, and today that same bar is sitting on the sink in my bathroom. Bachelor move, I know.

It's smaller now, cracked and discolored. But it still gets my hands clean and I think it'll be around for a while longer. I don't know how long a bar of soap is supposed to last. I swear I've been using it regularly. But things like that – the longevity of a bar of soap – make you realize a year really isn't all that long.

It looks a lot longer beforehand than afterward. For most people, it goes by and life changes imperceptibly. Not much is different when it's over. Your age is +1 and there are new songs on the radio and your nieces are talking a lot more.

Life kind of plods forward. That's true for the people back home who must think I'm living some crazy, exotic life, and it's true for me here. It's not everyday that I'm swinging off ropes over waterfalls into jungle pools. That was last Tuesday. It's not everyday that I'm rescuing baby sea turtles. That was a few weekends ago.

Leaving home is a sacrifice, no matter where you land. There are trade-offs. I would trade jungle waterfalls for just one afternoon of lazy football-watching with my family.

I still consider Grand Rapids my home and I'm realizing that, though I've only been in PR a year, I've actually been gone a lot longer. In 2008, I was in Africa. In 2009, I spent a summer and fall at Grace Adventures then moved to St. Joseph to work for Whirlpool. In 2010, I left St. Joe to go back to camp and then moved here to Puerto Rico. For much of the last three years, I've been away.

Gone.

Sometimes I get the feeling that while everyone back home is putting down roots and getting married and taking big, giant steps forward in life, I'm missing out on something. Most of my friends and family are back there, and most of the people I'm close to here are married or in a different stage of life. As a result, there have been some lonely days.

“Lonely,” for the record, is a terrible word. Just saying it, confessing it, affirms and exacerbates the feeling of it. But if I'm going to be honest, it's been a reality for me here that has colored my experience. I don't like being gone, being alone. But, you ask...

“How do you like Puerto Rico?”

Puerto Ricans ask me this all the time. It's usually a question rooted in pride in their island, especially for the older ones. I can tell that “You just love it, don't you?!?” is on the tip of their tongues.

Sure, I like Puerto Rico. I like 85 in February and never having to worry about icy roads. I like frappes and festivals and salsa and merengue music blaring from oversized speakers pretty much everywhere. I like waking up with the Caribbean lapping up just beyond my back door. I like exploring and the unpredictability and relaxed pace of island life. I like the creativity afforded me by a job that is directly related to impacting people's lives.

But there's still this big part of my heart that's stuck in Michigan, with its seasons and icy roads and – it's just home for me, and I've been gone for a long time. I can't help but look forward to returning someday.

My life hasn't synched up very well with everyone else's since I graduated from college. I've taken a different path, one with more miles traveled, more debt, less dollars earned. But I have to remind myself – don't take this for granted. These are good years and I'm hardly missing out. Someday, I'll miss the Caribbean and the salsa and jungle waterfalls, and I'll curse the biting wind and cold of Michigan in winter.

Tell ya what, I won't take this for granted if you, wherever and whoever you are, won't take yours for granted.

Scattered thoughts and further reflections on one year:

• I thought I would know Spanish by now. I don't. Learning a language is a long and difficult process.
• Top five frappes, in no particular order: Strawberry Oreo, Banana Oreo, Strawberry Cheesecake, Chocolate Coconut Banana, and Strawberry Kiwi (if the strawberries and kiwis are sweet.)
• I really don't mind public speaking anymore. At least not when I'm flanked by a translator.
• Dreaming and pitching new ideas is fun, but following through is far more difficult.
• I will never stop hating plyometrics, but I'm slowly growing more and more fond of P90X. Thanks, Tony.
• I cannot overstate the impact a package or letter has on me, no matter what's inside it. I've gotten a few from Michigan, one of which had a Tigers playoff towel that I will cherish and enthusiastically wave whenever the Tigers are playing or when I miss baseball, and a few letters from India. All of them were wonderful.
• Nobody is perfect. Not even missionaries.

tres meses

Not that this is a hugely momentous occasion or anything, but today marks three months since I left home. That gets a teeny-tiny asterisk because I went home for Christmas, but it's still three months since I left home. "For good." For the record, it's also been three months since my last haircut.

I say "for good" not because I'm done with Michigan, but because it's for the foreseeable future. Living abroad gives you a perspective on home that you can't get from within.

I live in paradise, yet I miss home. I know there are people dying to get away from the snow and the cold of winter in Michigan. I can't really blame them, I felt the same way each of my past 26 winters. Okay, maybe it's only been 10 or 11 that I really wanted out of the tundra. Up until that point I was happy to sled away the winter. But I understand the urgency with which we want Spring to arrive. Curse that awful groundhog.

There's warm sunshine falling on my desk through the shutters of my window, and when I stop hunching over the keyboard, I can see the Caribbean. But what's on my mind? I wonder what's for dinner tonight. I miss my family. I need to fold some laundry that's sitting in a basket in the middle of my kitchen. I think I threw away a plate when I tossed out the seafood salad someone gave me - I just can't motivate myself to eat more octopus than I have to. I hope they don't ask for the plate back. There are a million things I need to do for work, yet I'm sitting here blogging. There's a pile of thoughts nagging at my mind, not a one has me lying on a beach somewhere.

It doesn't feel like paradise, it feels normal.

When you visit a place like this, you ache when you leave because it's so sun-shiney and warm, but its beauty is really in its temporariness. Things that are fleeting often are beautiful: A sunset, a certain piece of music, youth, abrupt memories, vacation. They are things that are not to be missed, but can't be bottled up and saved. For me, it would be beautiful to go home and see my friends and family for a few days. I got to hear my niece on the phone the other day, and it gave me a big, silly smile.

I know that I have it really good here - I would say that I love it here. But that doesn't shake the thought that I miss my family, I miss Michigan, coming in from the cold. It bugs me that I'll miss a Michigan summer. I wonder if its just our generation that constantly wants to be somewhere else. We don't want to settle, we're hesitant to say "I love it here."

But inevitably, you do settle. You adapt. Wherever you land, you stay who you are. If you are laid back, you will be laid back at home and in paradise. If you are neurotic, you'll be neurotic at home and in paradise. If you are content, depressed, crotchety, at peace, curious, compassionate, hilarious, careless, adventurous, dangerous - that's what you'll be wherever you go. Where you are has little to do with who you are. You don't ever get away from that.

And so I'm here, loving it, but thinking often of home and family. Odds are, I'll stay longer than the year I first signed on for. I think that's the way it's supposed to go. The mission here makes a lot more sense if I can be constant, consistent, see it through to the end and make my contributions.

The Number 26

Last Tuesday, I sat on a coffee table in Josh's apartment and gave him a formal schooling in Dr. Mario on the Nintendo. I dominated. The TV was sitting on the floor, in the corner, one of three in the living room for Fred's upcoming Midtown Tetris Challenge. I wouldn't be in attendance for the Tetris Challenge, but I had thrown my full support behind it. Later, Fred came back and proudly showed off his new Fender Rhodes electric piano, a relic from the 60s or 70s on which Radiohead's Everything in it's Right Place can be perfectly replicated. We tinkered around on it, they made me sit down and forbid me to play chopsticks, but nothing else would come to me. A few years of piano lessons and I couldn't locate anything but chopsticks and a few pretty chords. Don't tell my piano teacher.

When I was a kid, if you had asked me how I saw a typical night for me in my mid-twenties, I'd have pictured grown up things. Paying bills. Wife. Kids. Coffee. Harder crossword puzzles. Then I'd have gone back to the NES. And tinkering with a Piano.

Didn't work out that way. I think that when you're growing up you see a few discrete lines between childhood and adulthood. A driver's license, high school graduation, and a few big birthdays officially usher you into the land of grown-ups. You get bills, kids, coffee, and you suddenly know how to handle more stuff.

At 26, I've got the bills, but no kids, still can't stand coffee, and I still have questions for mom and dad about how to handle stuff. And I've lost the piano lessons. The world is every bit as perplexing as it was when I was a kid. Actually, it's more perplexing. It's weird to have time for Nintendo, and have friends who sponsor Tetris tournaments. So I still don't feel qualified for the whole grown-up thing. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up and I still shudder at the thought of big responsibilities. Not in a worrisome way, but I'd rather not be the last line of defense between order and chaos.

And yet: Age has to carry with it some innate and automatic growth, despite my perceived lack of preparedness. I'm more grown up than I realize. I know some stuff. For instance, that the way I used to see growing up - with the clear, dividing lines between kid and adult - was wrong. It's a gradual spectrum, a gradual ascent (descent? assent?). We've all got some grown-up and we've all got some kid. Some of us spend it on video games, some of us - all of us - still have worry, some of us carry our love for high-school drama with us. Having time for the Nintendo and piano tinkering does not restore my adolescence, even if I wanted it to, but it's still a good time.

Leaving

This morning, I went to the park to run. I stretched, did some sit-ups, and after the final one laid on my back and looked up at the trees, the sunlight breaking through, blue sky shining down, green grass tender on the back of my neck, my hands. It was 11:00 am.

You cannot do this at 11:00 am if you have a real job.

I did this at 11 am because I do not have a real job.

But Jim, you have a real job, you work at Whirlpool.

No I do not.

What? Explain.

Gladly. I'll share what I can.

I took a job at Whirlpool in October, last year. They found me - actually, Aerotek found me on Grand Valley's careers website and called me, the door opened without my doing. I interviewed, they offered me a job and I took it. I'm more impulsive than I realize. Whirlpool, it turns out, is a pretty good place to work. I'm not sure what all I can tell you about the workplace. Most companies, especially big ones, would rather you didn't blog about work. They don't want people divulging their trade secrets. Being a low-level support rep, and a contract employee, I wasn't privy to too much of that anyway. So they're safe. And I don't have an axe to grind or anything.

I'll tell you a few generic office things: they have a cafeteria in the middle of the building where nobody actually eats. Not once did I eat the cafeteria food. I mostly bought Lipton iced tea there. There are a few blind corners around the building, and some people walk like they have urgent messages for the President. More than once I rounded one of said blind corners nearly to collide with a staffer on a mission, and narrowly avoided a flurry of papers and awkward excuses. It took me a few months to realize that there are rounded mirrors to avoid exactly that situation.

It didn't take long for me to decide that this job was not one I wanted to spend these years of my life doing. But, I know that lots of people have to pay their dues at the bottom in order to work their way up, so I stuck with it. My brother told me he couldn't see me working in a call center. I kind of agreed. But, 40 hours a week in Michigan is nothing to forsake. I stayed for the opportunities and the money, hoping there might be something for me later on down the line. People would ask me how work was going. There's no good way to answer that question if you're not happy. And for whatever reason I couldn't just answer it with a polite, "Great, thanks." So, for future reference, don't ask that question unless you're sure they love what they're doing or are prepared for brutal, quasi-depressing honesty.

The past seven months have brought a lot of introspection. I thought a lot about being a grown-up, about who I am and who God is and why he brought me there. But you can analyze things to death and never understand them any better. So maybe one day I'll have a better idea of what happened in the last few months.

But going off my own gut reactions, I was lonely and unhappy and not ready to spend a lot of time in a cubicle. Even though I could do the job, and do it well with people I liked, there was something more I wanted, things that I need to get out of my system before I can settle down.

I hadn't planned to go back to Grace. Even when I saw that they had need for another core staff position, I was pretty sure I wouldn't pursue it. I was settling in at Whirlpool whether I liked it or not. I'd developed rapport with people in the office, had found opportunities on other teams, began to build relationships with some coworkers outside of work. Leaving would actually involve leaving something behind. But I knew I had to at least consider it. My aim for the next few years is to get back to overseas missions, to find an opportunity abroad. You need money for that. But experience is equally valuable. So as I weighed the opportunity at Grace and shared my thoughts with friends and family, the counsel was pretty consistently to follow my heart, which I discovered was increasingly leading me back to Grace.

I told Grace I wanted the job. I called work a few days later to put in my two weeks notice. Some co-workers were surprised, people were mostly supportive. I put in my last day on Saturday and moved home yesterday. This morning, I laid on my back at the park, looked up at the trees and the sky, and felt thankful that I wouldn't spend a glorious Michigan summer in a cubicle.

Things I wish they told me after graduation

Sometimes, life moves at a crawl, and sometimes it moves really quickly. For the last few weeks, it has moved quickly.

For the last few years, my defining struggle has been to find my first full time job. 40 hours. Big paychecks. Rent due. Grocery shopping. Health insurance. It was the big hurdle, which when cleared would finally let me see some purpose, some direction, with clarity.

In the last few months, I came to appreciate that time. In the years after college, I obsessed over getting health insurance and income, seeking the definition and direction in a career. Life crawled.

But simultaneously, I lived a few pretty incredible memories. I spent a summer working in Orlando and got my work into a nationally-distributed publication. Later, I would see my name in a magazine on the rack in a bookstore in Grand Rapids. I went to Africa, slept in a tent with shreds of nylon between me and some hungry, loud hyenas. I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. I learned phrases in Swahili, fought a wildfire, showed films to burgeoning crowds in the waning daylight before the skies glittered impossibly with the Milky Way. I saw that life in ministry, though unspeakably difficult, was full of joy, meaning, purpose. I came home, got really good at delivering pizzas, answered the call to go back to summer camp and be the old guy on staff. And I loved it.

I didn't notice this at the time, but: I lived. While I was waiting for a career, I found ways to fill the cracks in my life, and they became life, became memories. I wouldn't trade them for a cubicle.

But life sped up. A few weeks ago, I got a call for a job. Come down for an interview, they said. I did. And suddenly, a job offer. I took it. Years of struggle, at times painful and exhausting, shaking my fist at a God whose patience dwarfed my own, met with solution.

I liked wondering, waiting. I became accustomed to it; it became a familiar, comfortable foe. And now it's... gone. I miss it.

Can you tell that I'm sliding into cubicle life with a touch of restlessness? If this is the thing you're looking forward to, for meaning, for life, I can tell you that this is not where you will find it.

Lest you worry that I'm miserable, be assured, I am not: Restlessness is not misery. The last few years of my life, I was restless at times, but I was never miserable. I am not worried about where I am. Man has had to till the fields since the first guy screwed it all up for us and I'm eager to put in my work. And to be honest, today was only day one and it was good. This will be a good place to work and I'll probably enjoy it.

If finding a career, or a beginning to one, was a hurdle, I've cleared it. But there are a bunch more hurdles. There's a lot to figure out about where to go from here. That familiar, comfortable foe isn't totally gone.



(In the meantime, I'll just bang on me drum)

The Meaning of the Universe

Two things happened this week that are, I guess, pointlessly small things in life that can be extrapolated into larger meaning or, at least, a mildly amusing blog entry.

First:

I went to the library on Wednesday. The Grandville library, the good one, where they don't yell at me when I come in with a cup of tea, where there's plenty of space and lots of tables and high ceilings so I don't feel crowded, and Wi-Fi to keep me from accomplishing anything. My only qualm is that the place closes at five on weekends and eight on week nights. This is where I begin to miss college: Late night silence in the library. The library is my only respite of quiet from the frappuchino-blending and ambient hipstermusic of coffee shops. But it closes at 8.

So I went to the library with a composition book and Elie Wiesel's Night, which I got for fifty cents at a thrift shop, presumably donated by someone who held onto it after a literature class. I brought with me a cup of tea and a few cookies my mom had baked, because writing makes me think and thinking makes me tired, and cookies counterbalance it all. There's a sign at the entrance about no outside food or drink, and I never pay any attention to it because I assume it's not for me, it's meant for little kids with drippy popsicles and overburdened moms with cups of coffee. I pose no threat with my tea and neatly bagged cookies.

I sat down at a table near awindow and noticed an open checkbook ledger next to me. Soon, an elderly guy came back with a stack of newspapers and sat down kitty-corner from me, and reclaimed his checkbook ledger. I realized I had invaded his space, and that I would probably feel a little awkward myself if someone sat at my table. Nevermind that there are four seats.

He gave me a glare, and shuffled his newspapers. I tried to look unimposing. Just a guy with a book and some tea and - what's this? - some cookies. No, sir, no problems here. I wasn't the teenager who crossed your lawn last summer or the kid with the loud music in traffic. I meant no harm.

But as I presented my bag of cookies, his unnecessary vigilantism came out. "You know you're not supposed to have food in here," he said.

I found it shocking.

So I didn't defend my right to cookies. I just said, "Okay," and put 'em away.

I couldn't read or write, I kept thinking about how weird it was that he called me out. And he was really loud shuffling his newspaper.

So I moved elsewhere, and ate my cookies.

Second:

I went to the mall yesterday, and found the parking ramp crowded. So I stalked a lady and her kids as they found a space, and waited. She took forever getting settled, and cars started to line up behind me. I waited patiently, committed to the space, and a few cars bypassed the line, making the lady who was about to leave the space wait even more. So she backed out and faced me, and just as she passed me, another car, with a punk kid and his girlfriend arrived and immediately took it.

I found it shocking.

I used to wonder about the maniacs out there who flip out over traffic snafus and end up in jail for crippling someone who cut them off in traffic. Now I know where they're coming from.

I was offended. I thought about waiting and telling him I had been waiting for the space for a solid two-three minutes, that I had laid claim to it and backed up traffic for the space he had so callously usurped. Then I thought about throwing the half-full (in this case, half-empty) cup in my cup-holder at his car and leaving. It was only right.

He... must... pay.

Instead, I drove on, and found a space much farther away from the entrance and never saw him again.

Now, I might be blowing both of these little stories out of proportion, but I think they're clues to the meaning of the universe, somehow. And that is why I choose to share them with you.