Listen to The Saturday Stoke
Who I am was forged on the long road behind me. The road? It’s tangled and hard and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Before working from home as a writer, researcher and dad to three faerie-princess-warriors in North Carolina, I was a forty-something Ph.D. student who stepped out of his writing career to obey God’s whispers.
Before I lived in Oxford studying beauty and C.S. Lewis, I lived in Atlanta, studying how to be a new father, husband, a seminarian at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary—which rejected me, then accepted me.
Before Atlanta, I lived in Lititz, Pennsylvania newly married to Christine (@splintersong), I landscaped houses and plowed snow to pay for my undergraduate degree, which took me 14 years to finish.
Before finally graduating in my early thirties, I toured the country for three years in a mint green Ford van with two best friends playing music for anyone who’d listen. We recorded CDs, and I thought music would be my life.
Before the band days, I spent years bouncing in and out of colleges: kicked out of one university, asked to leave another and finding weird but beautiful spiritual roots at, still, another. It took this hefty rebellion before I fell in love with Christ beneath a snowy January bonfire night whispering, “Ok God, if this faith stuff is real, show me.”
Before the rebellion of my early twenties, I grew up a stereotypical pastor’s kid. I knew it all, till I didn’t.
If life has taught me anything, it’s that grace covers, and that it’s okay to wander. I marvel at God’s guiding hand, patience, and never-gonna-give-up love for me.
Here’s a quick hack for discovering the meaning of life.
It’s in your journey. It’s unique to you. Just turn around, and look at the path you’ve walked thus far. Peer down the road upon which you’ve journeyed.
Life is a constant becoming. We never arrive. And we are constantly arriving.
Before you get bogged down with discouragement from whatever trouble has found its way into your life at the moment, look over your shoulder, and remember your becoming. Remember how God has carried you.
And rest in the assurance that he will always carry you. Following Jesus does not guarantee an easy or clear path in life. But it does mean that when the tough times come—and they will come—that he holds you up, he strengthens your resolve, he breathes life into your heart.
Your homework for the weekend? Throw a journal in your favorite bag, and go for a walk. Use five, six, seven, eight, short paragraphs that describe your life in reverse, as I’ve done above. When you’ve finished, reflect on the faithfulness and mystery of God’s provision in your life.
And remember, stay stoked my friends.
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Great content. Half the calories.
Buckle-up Buttercup.
The Saturday Stoke #11