The Next Chapter

Transitions are unequivocally revealing when it comes to the compass of one's heart. I laugh to myself when I see the transitions that God has brought Ang and me through so far in our marriage. Things do not tend to happen gradually to us - it could be argued we do it to ourselves - but I like to think our God is trying to reveal something very important in us.
Almost 3 years ago, Ang and I got married within the same month that I started a new job, opening a new store. A year (ish) later, Ang and I discovered we were pregnant with Olivia in the same week that we closed on our house - do you see a theme beginning to emerge? This time around easily trumps those though, a month ago, I found out I was getting promoted, Ang quit her job, and we sold our house within the same weekend. The interesting thing about God is that He is always preparing people for something coming down the road. This experience has been pointed to by others before it, and it will point the way to another coming down the road. The skills and knowledge we garner from one challenge will serve us very well in the next -- one could even say the current experience may be insurmountable without the abilities drawn from the prior one. This is precisely where the laughter comes in - I mean promotion, quitting, and house sold in one weekend - what is around the corner for us?

In that sense, my sense of mystery is stoked as I think about the great journey of life. I struggle to view life in any other way than as a grand story, penned long ago - a journey that we participate in and experience as it unfolds before us. When I look at my life, I find a string of stories that when strung together form The Story, My Story. I wonder what great adventure looms ahead on the horizon, and as I said before, what God is creating in me that will be essential to experiencing that journey to the fullest.

I often fail to see the adventure in the everyday...in today. My mind opens up quite easily to the distant adventure, the one that creates hope, the one that stirs a sense of anticipation - but it never quite seems like it is time for that adventure. Instead I look to the future, yet avoid ever embracing it fully and unfortunately all too often miss the adventure in today. My world seems to lack adventure altogether. In my Americanized world, my constantly climate controlled car, where variations of a mere degree or two cause indefinite fiddling, and where I grow impatient when my laptop that connects me to people all over the globe takes more than 30 seconds to boot up - I realize I am missing something or maybe losing something.

What I gain through the virtues of advancement and technology, are a loss of adventure. My existence is one that is readily defined by control and convenience. Adventure stands in juxtaposition - the very nature of adventure is to lose control, to be at risk. I think this is why I miss the mystery inherent in my story and quietly grow numb to the role I play in this grand story - the one I forgot I was living.


It may not make sense to anyone but me, but transitions are so valuable. Transitions, the changing of chapters, create a signpost, a marker along the path we are traveling. This transition has reminded me that there is much at stake in me recalling the other signposts that have come before - to string those signposts together to see a trail taking shape. In orienteering, 3 points of reference are needed for triangulation, to determine one’s current location. So, as I string together these stories (signposts) The Story begins to take shape, the veil lifts, the fog dissipates and again I remember the Grand Story that has been written. I remember that I have a part to play and I take heart in knowing that my story is not about the struggles, its not about the challenges - it is about what theme has been created and how the Great Storyteller will expound on the themes He has written into my past and my present to create a future for me.

Read more...

The Moose Mug

Do you ever see something that is pretty irrelevant, but for some reason it stirs a desire for creativity up inside of you?  I think I am a bit desperate for creativity right now.  The last couple months of work have been a bit of a grind and I have been feeling restless in part because I have struggled to carve out any time in my day for me (read: not posting a blog for nearly a month).  Learning to function in all the different roles I have as a man has not always been an easy transition and the journey from boy to man has been full of potholes, twists, turns and changes.  Adaptation is the key.  Adaptation, I suck at.  My wife will tell you, my family will tell you, my employees will tell you - I can plot a course with the best of them and I can put my nose to the grindstone and push through challenging times - what is tough for me is to course correct, to adjust, to adapt.

Before Ang and I started dating, we were really good friends and had been for a couple of years.  We always enjoyed being around each other, enjoyed similar things and had a penchant for laughing a lot and having great conversations.  I always really enjoyed spending time with her.  That is the mode I was in with her...great friends.  Well when the opportunity presented itself to start dating, I hesitated because we were such good friends.  I was so stuck in that mindset that I struggled to see the opportunity I had to start a relationship with a truly amazing girl.  I could have easily missed the chance save for the grace of God and the wisdom of my Dad..."Ry, girls like Ang don't come around very often, she is really special and you better figure out how you feel about her before it is too late."  Thanks Pops - good advice!  It is like when I finally make my mind up on something there is no stopping me, but until that light bulb comes on I am living in the dark.

So, back to the moose mug.  I was working an opening shift on the Friday after Thanksgiving...we opened at 3:10am to a line of 10 wide eyed, middle aged, women who needed caffeine to propel them into their shopping frenzy.  By the end of my day, I was exhausted, worn out and excited to get back to my family who was hanging out in Hood River.  I walked by the Moose Mug (a thick, brown, sturdy, manly mug with a white moose image on front) and it stirred something in me .  It reminded me of a time when I used to live a portion of my life outdoors.  The trips into the wild with Paul and Ty are memories I cherish because there was a wild and untamed aspect to them.  They remind me of a time when irresponsibility and spontanaetiy predominated my life - don't get me wrong, I wouldn't go back to that season of my life, but I feel a need to reconnect to the heart of the man who was living then.  I feel like I need to reconnect with the "wild man" who would camp, hike, fish and smoke his pipe. 

When I got home and my wife discovered the new mug (which further clogs our cupboards - we have one whole shelf dedicated to coffee mugs which is an undeniable pitfall of working at a coffee shop) and asked me about it and all I could say is that it is my "writing mug."  What the heck is a writing mug?  Well for me it is something that inspires me to carve out time to create something - to harken back to the wild man - to live an adventure.  I find that in my creativity I most closely resemble the heart of the Creator, in whose image I have been formed.  So here I sit, writing, while my wife is at work and our little one rests up for a day of crawling, talking, laughing, and living -  I am enjoying some Christmas Blend and the adventures my moose mug reminds to discover.  What inspires you?  Where or to whom do you look for that feeling of transcendence that allows you to reflect on your life and project into your future?

Read more...

Mystery is History

As I wrote about in my last post, a longing for adventure is hard wired into each of our souls.  I believe that this longing is intimately connected with our view of the world around us.  Our sense of adventure is directly proportional to the mystery we allow to exist in the world around us.  This is not a fool's mystery that could be explained but instead is not, this is genuine mystery, the unknown, ideas and concepts that are beyond us and therefore draw us out into a story much larger and more grand than are own.  A story that encompasses ours but is not limited to its confines.

As we began to lose our sense of wonder and awe, the world became automated, robotic, predictable even - except that its not.  Somewhere along the way mysteries were studied, dissected, analyzed and put back together so that we could build formulas in an attempt to remove elements of the unknown - except we now know less than we knew then.  We fear mystery.  We avoid the unknown.

I know I do - my actions declare rather boldly that I would prefer to control life rather than experience it.  I try to fit God into my pocket to be carried around like a talisman instead of seeing Him as a shepherd, One who longs to guide and direct me along the path of my life.  The concept that our life on this Earth is one of mystery is unsettling to us because to grasp the mysterious life requires us to fully trust. Adventure cannot be had in a controlled environment - doesn't work that way.  Control negates adventure.  Mystery is the petri dish whereby adventure can be cultivated - without mystery there is no adventure to embark on.

Oftentimes we choose to control our lives because when we have control, we cannot be caught off guard or surprised, but rather remain in the driver's seat always knowing.  Why is it such a big deal for us to always know?  Knowledge is powerful but not singularly.  Knowing what you will do in ten years can be helpful, but it can also be limiting.  This is one of my greatest struggles.  I want to know where my foot is going to land before I pick it up to take a step.  I think that by knowing, somehow I will gain power over the successfullness of the outcome and therefore miss most of the entire point.  My Father is less interested in where my foot is going to land and is more interested in whether or not I will try to take a step - where that step takes me is secondary.  The point is the step, the point is the journey, the point is the process of learning to trust enough to take a step and not know where the next one will take you.  Peter would never have gotten out of the boat had he worried himself with where he was going to put his foot (on top of the water ended up working out just fine).  If he had worried about where he was going to step, he would have deduced that his foot had nowhere to go and therefore he could not possibly take a step.  Instead, he saw Christ, chose to follow and allowed Him to take care of the rest. 

This sounds warm and fuzzy but I do not intend it to sound that way.  Trust is ugly, faith is awfully messy at times because it requires that we voluntarily release control and choose vulnerability, something our society has not trained us to do.  In our me-first culture, nothing is more counterintuitive than choosing to be vulnerable, than choosing to embrace the unknown in hopes that you will be met there.  Our inability to be self sufficient demostrates our great need - our striving to run solo anyways demonstrates our great pride and desire for control, but taking an opportunity to relinquish control, to choose surrender, to choose to embrace the unknown demostrates our profoundly unique ability to trust.  To trust is to embrace mystery, to embrace mystery is to open oneself to an opportunity for adventure.

Read more...

Sense of Adventure

I  was working on my next blog this morning while Olivia happily crawled around the carpet squealing and looking at everything she could feast her eyes on.  She would touch the wall ever so deliberately as if she was trying to determine exactly how it felt and as she went from one item to the next, her eyes slowly fixed upon the door that was cracked partially open.  The opening was maybe an inch wide but it was like a screaming invitation to an adventure, to something grand, to the unknown.  Olivia quickly began making her way over to the door that was ajar and as she drew near she slowed and peaked inside ever so cautiously to see what lay behind the door.  She gently urged the door open and made her way inside where a wonderland of amusement, mystery, and excitement awaited her.  She found her way to...her room.

My daughter's sense of adventure is alive and well and her ripe imagination allows everything in her world to experienced to the fullest.  I can remember times in my life when I viewed my life as an adventure.  A time when the happenings of my day were significant on a more reaching scale than my own mere amusement, a time when it seemed there were invitations to grandeur around every corner and a time when I felt alive.  I think I see my life a bit less like an adventure now.  If I had to describe that time with an image, I felt like I was standing on a mountain overlooking an open plain, and now I still feel like I am on the mountain only I have lost the horizon and am looking only at the ground in front of me.  I need to look up, I need to see where I am going, but I fear that breaking from my current state may leave me realizing I have lost my way. 

My heart longs for a new adventure - life has been so full this past year with us buying a house, having a baby, working, and gettting used to being parents.  For awhile, it seemed that the adventure would be becoming parents - but that's missing the mark.  Where it is wild and crazy being a parent, the adventure for Ang and I must lie in doing something, in being a part of something truly grand and worthwhile.

Let me think about adventures for a second...what makes a great adventure? A great adventure has an interesting plot, something captivating and compelling; it has a series of obstacles that must be overcome (nothing great enough to be deemed an adventure comes without resistance right!), there must be a company of people (a brotherhood, companion, company, someone to share the journey with), it must be something worth laying everything on the line for - there must be a risk/reward in there somewhere and an adventure must change the adventurer in some way.  No great adventure leaves a person unchanged.  I want this.  I want an adventure.  I love my family and I like our life well enough at times but it leaves me yearning for something that really gets my blood pumping, something that compels me and something that I feel like is worthy of the short amount of time we have here on Earth.

I want to feel like Olivia must have felt when she saw that door cracked open.  Curiosity, wonder, mystery - these things gripped her little heart and she went searching for what lay behind the door.    

I want that anticipation.  I want that sense of intrigue.  I want that adventure.   That's my prayer.

Read more...