now now now

once again, it's very late. i want to be asleep, but it's my final night of the five-blogs-in-five-days challenge, and i couldn't simply go to sleep with such an accomplishment at my fingertips. okay, it's not really that much of an accomplishment. some people blog every day. i'll try to blog more. i will. i will.

i'm not going to write much, mostly because i want to sleep.

what i want to say tonight is really something that i need to internalize, myself. people put a lot of pressure on themselves to make their lives look a certain way - have a certain career, certain body, certain partner, certain home, certain car - the list goes on and on. we all have an idea about what our lives could look like and should look like. take a second to envision that. it might not be specific, it might just be a state of mind, or even just a set of vague characteristics that will make you happy.

now that you have that in your head, you might either be excited, because you believe you're on your way, or depressed, because you just don't really see it happening, or know how to change that. it's the latter group that i often find myself in, and it's the latter group that i'd like to engage right now. so, all of you shiny, happy, on-your-way-to-the-top people can just stop reading right now. not really. that would hurt my feelings and you might become a bounce rate statistic for this blog.

now, second group, in my experience, those negative feelings often rest on me. i'm responsible for the direction of my life, and if i'm not making it happen, then it's my fault. this sort of self-loathing is how unhealthy complexes are born and perpetuated, and that just makes life difficult. i propose, for us, a slight shift in perspective. i've said this before - perspective is absolutely everything.

let us never be upset with ourselves for what our life looks like. that's silly and not constructive.

why?

well, because we, our present selves, really only have control over one thing - the absolute present. the only thing i can control at this very moment is what i write here, because that's what's going on right now. do you see? life is a vast series of very small and very large choices, and if we just focus on making the decision right in front of us a good decision, then we will be well on our way. this attitude may or may not change the course of our life. (that's a disclaimer - i'm not offering advice that will change your life circumstances, per se.) but, it will make the life we have a happier one.

for instance. let's say that i wanted a new job because the one i had was slowly crushing my soul. i could complain to everyone who would listen and be angry with myself for not having a better job, but that wouldn't help anything. it would only make me angry and think poorly of myself and i need to get along with myself because i have no choice but to be myself.

if i, instead, whenever tempted to have this bad attitude of exasperation and self-hatred, were to look online for a job, or work on my resume - that would be me, doing what i can do at that very second to make my life into something that i want it to be.

as i said at the beginning, this is a message to myself more than anything else: i can only do what i can do at any given time, let the rest fall as it will, because it will anyway, with or without a shred of my concern.

this is where, as a christian, i should have some sort of advantage. though i'm kind of unclear as to what God actually moves and changes in my every day life, trusting that things that i can't control will work out - looking for the good in everything, for the hand of God, is healthy. it, when done properly, allows me to focus only on what i can do in my tiny little sphere of influence, and if we all did that, all the time, our tiny spheres would make up one, giant, worry-free world.

one would think

one would think that spending most of my time with people who don't share my faith might weaken or dilute my faith.

the opposite is true.

filling my life with conversations with people who don't claim Jesus has had a very interesting effect: my faith has been affirmed, so very affirmed.

this is surprising because, before this season of life, i spent most of my life with very few significant relationships with those outside of the church. no one ever told me to be afraid, but i was, a bit. i was afraid of being in a place where i would be judged and rejected, and where everything i held most dear would be mocked.

i fear no more.

sure, i am not completely un-mocked, un-judged, and un-rejected, but the discomfort, the pain, even, is nothing, really, compared to the relief i feel, knowing that i can really belong to truly secular communities.

Jesus lived as though every person was worth seeing and loving. i say i serve Jesus, and that means i serve people. i connect with something inside of me that says that my well-being should be inextricably bound up in the well-being of other humans, any other human that it is within my sphere to impact - be they a friend, co-worker, or a poor farmer on a continent i may never visit.

when i connect with other people, even people who generally avoid christians like the plague, and when we discover that we're really not that different - we share that concern for the friend, the co-worker, and the poor farmer - my faith is affirmed. i was created to love, and so were they. they might not see it that way, but they inspire me because their compassion makes them more faithful followers of Christ than some people who claim His name.

sometimes i think, as christians, we lose the forest for the trees. we concentrate too much on the means, and not enough on the end. if we lift our gaze just a bit, to what it is that we're really trying to bring to pass, we might lock eyes with others who are looking there too, others with whom we never expected to share anything. and isn't that what Jesus did? share with the unexpected?

*therefore, i urge you brothers, do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought, but give those around you a chance to surprise and inspire you. let us allow ourselves to think that we might just have as much to learn as we do to offer, when it comes to our exchanges with the "outside world."

*Paul wont mind the plagiarism, I'm sure :)