Thwarted

I love being a Dad - I  love the giggles and wiggles and when I see my little girl, I see the beauty of creation and remember how fortunate I am.  I am a blessed man - I have a beautiful family and a wife who loves me more than I could ever deserve.  Life, as beautiful and full of joy as it is sometimes is also a constant struggle.  I feel resistance around every corner and nothing seems to be coming easily.  I feel like I am being thwarted...by God.

You have to understand something about me - I can't not plan - it is like this innate thirst inside of me that won't be quenched without a gameplan.  Part of that is growing up in a family of planners - we are already discussing plans for Christmas and knew what we were doing on Halloween by the time September rolled around.  My job is a great outlet for that because all day long I plan and execute - it is probably 80% of what I do.  I am in the process of re-learning that planning my life is not always a fruitful endeavor.  I knew this once, but somewhere along the way believed again that planning my life could somehow hedge me against the riskiness of risk itself (interesting how I have to learn things more than once - the simpler the concept the more readily I seem to forget its applications).  This is where the thwarting comes in to play.

I am wrestling with God - well its really more of me running around in my life and God waiting for me to stop so He can give me the direction I say I so desperately want.  I am like a little kid hopped up on pixie stix, zooming around, trying to figure out what to do next.  Eventually, I may even exhaust myself enough that I will stop and listen.  It's not that I don't try - if anything I try too hard, but somehow, deep inside my own broken humanity lies a will that still thinks I can make it on my own.  Nonetheless, Ang and I are talking to each other and to God about what He has next for us and right now it feels like we are putting our hearts out on our sleeves and hearing nothing...just crickets...  We seem to catch a glimmer of an idea that ignites something but then as quickly as the fire starts, its extinguished.  We just can't seem to find our way right now.  Life feels a bit like walking out of my house for the first time in the morning into a thick bank of fog - I just feel disoriented.

Concocting a plan that seems like something God might have for us and branding our plans with His name is always going to be easier than truly waiting.  I am impatient and times, but today, I thanked God for His thwartiing ways.  He is truly my guide on this journey and at times I am so far off the trail that I need some thwarting, some resistance, and some "gentle" corrections to my course.

I am asking God for direction, but more importantly for the courage to follow Him.  I don't know what lies around the next bend in the road of this journey for our family, but I am excited, I sense it is something truly grand.  I sense it is something worthy of the calling God has on our lives.  I sense it will require much, but I sense it will exceed our highest hopes.