Back at DeBeen this afternoon, and catching up on blogs. My two favorites are from missionaries - my sister Connie updates from Indiana and my friend Kate updates from Nicaragua. They're both teaching and living among those they serve. They have so much love to pour out onto a hurting world, and their hearts come through the updates they share with us at home. It doesn't hurt that they're both wonderful writers and have brilliantly poetic outlooks on life. I told a friend recently that we all have our own great stories and adventures, and some people just have the gift to tell theirs better than others. Doesn't make one greater than the other. And then I look at my own life, not to compare myself to these two amazing women, but to put it into perspective. Am I where I'm supposed to be, and am I making the most of it? Because sometimes I wonder.
What is my life? I often feel these days like I'm in that "starving artist" phase of my life. Like this is all just fodder for a good book/movie someday. I mean, to my name I have a record player and an Atari in a bachelor pad that I share with an OCD youth pastor with a master's degree, and a cat who's as confusing as the book he's named after (Finnegans Wake). My days are spent hanging out on a farm with 13 (currently) ex-addicts who just want to get right with God. I listen to their stories and thoughts, pray with them, laugh with them, and break bread with them. And when I'm not there, I'm at DeBeen reading, writing, making up drink combinations and naming them. This is my life and it's alright with me. Sure, I'm single and unemployed and the lack of such things sometime leaves me at a loss. And my George Bailey itch to skip town is ever-nagging. But I'm living in God's will and that makes it all right, doesn't it?
I'm sitting here, listening to The Urban Sophisticates low in headphones. Low enough to still hear all that's going on around me. Rob runs the coffee orders, smooth jazz whirs on nearby, he greets her, she smiles, kids play behind me, newspapers shift, chairs slide with a scratch, more coffee, scissors, she goes out for a smoke, door opens and shuts again. And The Urban Sophs blend with it all like a soundtrack to life. "I can see Jesus smile and there's not a better feeling." Yeah, I'm where I'm supposed to be. It's not just a limbo period, not just fodder. It's a life and it's wonderful.
Books on Sale
