Half-Content

Contentedness is a fickle thing with me. Sometimes I am very comfortable in my little job in my little place. Other times I struggle because I am antsy for something different, but I do not know what that is.

I admire stable people. People who are deeply rooted in their community, and who have lived in or near the same place most of their lives. I admire people who work in the same line of work doing admirable work for a humble salary their whole life. I envy people who have had the same friends since they were children or teenagers. Those folks that worry when they buy a new house after their kids leave home. The problem is, I am not sure I am one of those people.

I am not sure most people see this. I am the goofy, overweight youth pastor who has a mean Chris Farley impression. I am the bookworm who has always read something insightful or interesting. I am the storyteller whose eyes light up when I share something that happened to me, or a theory that I have about something I have observed. I am Friar Tuck, the minister with a little bit of an ornery streak.

But I doubt I have ever been content. The thing is, I am just beginning to own this truth. I have always thought I was meant for more than where I am and what I am doing. That their is something huge and powerful just beyond the horizon. That someday I was going to have the white picket fence with a wife and several children. That I was going to write a book that changed the world. When I was in 5th and 6th grade, people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said I wanted to be the President of the United States. And to tell the truth, I meant it. I thought it was possible. And I had this plan that I was going to go home and be a Congressman until I was 35, and then around my 40th birthday I would run for President.

I guess part of what I am saying as well is that I have a hard time living up to my own dreams and my own expectations. And I expect to get to these exalted places by doing everything right. And I expect that by doing all of the things that I was supposed to do or told to do that I would have somehow found success and high achievement by this point in my life. Instead I am a nearly 33 bachelor living in a one bedroom apartment, and struggling to keep a youth ministry afloat and my job in good standing.

And in those moments of discontent, I pray and I wonder, when is MY moment going to come? When am I going to find the love of my life, have the growing church, have lots of supportive friends that I can count on, and write that great work of writing that will change the course of history? When will I live up to my standards? When will I be able to hold up my head high and be proud, and know that my family and friends are proud of me? When will I emerge from being on the perpetual brink of failure to a rousing success as a human being?

It is really those things I am most concerned about. Most days I am happy living in a small place, having a decent car that runs, and being able to pay the bills. Deep down, though, there is this lurking feeling at the pit of my stomach that I am meant for something more, this hunger that my life has a lot of potential for a greater impact, and that I am failing. I tell myself (and others)--John Calvin wrote the Institutes at 26, Martin Luther King Jr. had already delivered the I HAVE A DREAM speech by the time he was my age, and the list goes on, and what have I accomplished? Nothing. No big splash. Just plodding along griding out ministry in struggling and/or dying churches.

And I wonder....am I alone in feeling this way? Am I being selfish? Am I setting myself up for failure?

Thursday I had a conversation with a former boss of mine. He was asking about my future. And I was telling him my dreams about the hope I had of leaving here at some point, and finding a church that would not require me to work at Walmart on the side to support myself. I went on that my coming here I feared had been this huge dowturn in my career that I might never recover from. He agreed that this might be possible from my perspective, and that he might feel the same way, and then he said, "Of course, when you think like this you are forgetting the Holy Spirit and how God can lead and what God can do."

Of course I tried to explain how I did include the Holy Spirit in my plans, until I got the realization that my life is not to be as much about including God in my plans as much as it is God including my life in his plans. And my job is to be the faithful servant of the King, the good soldier of the Lord of Hosts, the plodding farmer in the field. That the Holy Spirit is like a wind that blows where it pleases (John 3), and that my job is to hoist my sail to wherever that wind may drive me.

And I remembered what I tell people so often but forget for myself. That no failure is beyond redemption. That no dream is beyond fulfillment. That today has enough to be worried about. And that I can trust God with my todays and tomorrows, even when I cannot figure it out.