the evidence of things unseen....

For we walk by faith, not by sight.
~2 Cor 5:7

Can I highlight this post? Highlighters are badass.

The Bible speaks for itself. Nothing can be added, and nothing can be taken away. Although I often try to interpret the Truth as applicable to my own life and then share it here, everyone is at a different place in their lives. What I'm experiencing is unlikely to be what anyone here is going through attm. However, the Truth is for everyone, and is meant to lead us all [on infinitely varying paths] to one destination :)

I won't attempt a lengthy deciphering of this past week. Not...yet. Sometimes I try way too hard to understand the events/words/coincidences that weave together our journey. Looking for profound meaning in life's everyday experiences. All too often I have to remind myself that I just need to give what I have to what's right before me, and let the profound come naturally, later on, when my perspective is more complete.

The significance and cause of the cliche phrase "hindsight is 20/20" just hit me as I wrote that. I think I just got sassed by God. Yes, I just claimed that God is a sassy God...

Everything is so much simpler than we tend to make it. The closer I get to Him, the simpler it gets :)

This past week = 2 Corinthians 5:7. The theme began last Sunday when Psalm of Abraham by Audra Lynn came out of nowhere and wouldn't stop playing in my head. So random. But not really... my thoughts work heavily through music, and I believe it's often how the Lord speaks to me:

Psalm of Abraham by rpavia

From there, quite a few other reminders culminating up to today, where the message in Church was all about this (from Mark 2). It's where Jesus responds to those walking in faith, and not by sight. Truly walking. As Pastor Mark said in this sermon: "if you're not walking in faith, then you're not walking".

Then after work, I went to see Book of Eli with a fantastic friend, to close out the day... and having no idea what it would be about. If anyone's seen the movie... you know what I'm getting at in all of this. If not, GO SEE IT. Like, NOW.

Just a movie? Yes. Hitting home something that the Lord has been trying to implant within me this week? Maybe :) I have a lot of work to do in walking by faith.... don't we all. This is just a seed being planted.... not a vine to prune and find fruit in. Not something to search for the profound in, just yet.

I truly think coincidences are less often a result of our selective perception, and more often (always?) a way that God gets our attention fixed on something. While we might not know the significance of it, the occurrence has a purpose. The moral of the story being not to hurt yourself by trying understand how God works. Magic tricks weren't invented so that the audience could figure them out :P

Think of coincidences as God's little yellow highlighter. I love highlighters.

ding?

The last time I was this intrigued with a potential pursuit, Schwarzenegger had just been elected to office and I reached the legal drinking age. The first time was not influenced by alcohol and I'm pretty sure this time wasn't either ;-)

To say that I've stumbled onto something I seriously want to study and engage in would be a premature assessment. But in the previous year of prayer, I needed to empty myself of worldly biases and narrowed vision concerning my career path to find the place I'm in now. The previous mindset had seemingly answered little, and pointed nowhere of worth. Lets explore where I'm coming from.

We could start and end with John 15:5-11. This whole past year could... as my focus. But how about some details.

I've had a multitude of career interests, to say the least. But a winning mix of potential, practicality, and chemistry with my own strengths has evaded me all these years. Lets take a quick glimpse at the big ones: By 6th grade I was a natural artist, who realized in 7th grade that pencils and clay weren't going to feed a family. By 8th grade I was in love with Jazz... 11th grade inspired to teach music, and realized once college applications were rolling in that I couldn't improvise worth a damn, let alone teach anything coherently to anyone, even in my other favorite (physics) classes. I spent more time playing Soccer than anything else in my youth, and well, that's a sport; 'nuff said. So soccer/music would become mere hobbies, right? I always had a love of aviation, so... what was a good mix of career potential with this and my desire to work in R&D someday? Aeronautical Engineering, naturally :) With this pursuit in college came the realization that I had seriously underestimated how much math I would be doing, how theoretical it was, and how little my creative hands-on strengths would be employed. I felt disconnected from so much of myself in this field. So very disengaged. And I knew I would probably be heading to SoCal, Washington, Kansas, or D.C. if I wanted to work for the big aerospace employers. So when the opportunity to get hands-on within aviation as a pilot presented itself, I couldn't resist the thought of flying for a living, and as an airline pilot potentially work anywhere in the world. Moving back home to NY? Perhaps... family is pretty important to me. But I had a good idea by this time that I juuuuust might have run into a certain someone that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with... and with her career pursuits being quite ambitious, the potential for geographical flexibility in my own career seemed pretty important. That was the deal breaker in my decision to enter flight school. Some years whirl by. 2008 rolls around as I come to the realization that being a pilot is anything but conducive to flexibility, stability, or security as I had once envisioned for a family. From youth to now all I had wanted was a talent, a profession, a direction that I could run with and achieve great things in (eventually). And someone to walk with in all things, and be excited to adventure with into tomorrow. 27 years in, and the slate is seemingly still clean.

Nothing tugged at my heart more over the years than the little voice inside me saying that I was going nowhere without Christ... without pursuing that relationship and accompanying wisdom I needed to gain with more fervor than any worldly pursuit. It sparked my curiosity in my early years... it poked at unfulfilled places of my heart in high school, and shed a growing light on what I was missing as I ventured into college. The aforementioned concerns took control, and I didn't yet have the faith to see that the answers weren't going to be found within myself. I needed to be transformed to ever move forward. Even up to the last couple months, doors had been shut on any progress professionally that might lead to something other than what the Lord intends for me. And it took until now to realize that I had been running *from* so many things that I should have been running *to*, all these years. Running in fear... of falling short in things I truly cared for, if I really tried. It was a twisted self-defense mechanism, brought on mainly by false worldly reasoning, and knee-jerk reactions to minor setbacks.

Coming face to face with the realization that I had made my faith a secondary priority and let the things that I love slip away in the lack of direction all those years devastated me. Don't get me wrong... it wasn't like I woke up one day and realized all this... I had been slowly drawing my thoughts inward and shutting down to others as I became more and more frustrated with my lack of progress professionally and spiritually. It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to guess what that did to the most important relationships in my life. I had always been independent, associating myself with so many different groups and establishing myself nowhere. And I got to the point where I realized close relationships, and especially the one with my savior, was paramount in growing maturity and strength as an individual and as a member of a family and community.

So I've summarized my historical setbacks. Does it sound like a sob-story? Pleeease, self-pity is far from a problem... I'm joyful in being able to come face-to-face with my mistakes, if only to learn from them and head the right direction from here on out.

I've singled out the things I fell short in for this post... there's a reason I didn't mention my huge time commitment as an RA, and a Staff Resident. There's a reason I didn't mention my involvement in the Church (ever increasing, at least) and what my ambitions are now. I understand my strengths, and what I want in life so much better now. I've learned that there's so much to be said for trusting your instincts, and that in the famous words of Dr. Howard Thurman:

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive."

And I finally know what makes me come alive... or at least I now realize the importance of these things. It's led me to an interesting concept I wanted to introduce tonight... but this post has gotten pretty long ;-) Also, I have a lot more exploring to do before I say much... as I said in the beginning of this post, to say that I've stumbled onto something I seriously want to study and engage in would be a premature assessment. But if you want a teaser into where it's headed, some keywords are Community, Culture, Google, and an amazing little concept I stumbled upon called Physchogeography. Stay tuned :)

Spirit Led

The overwhelming number of thoughts/experiences backlogged that I want to share is a telltale sign that I have one of two problems:
1. I don't write nearly often enough.
2. There's a missing avenue of interaction in my life where these thoughts would be more effectively expressed and put to good use.
3. I am a banana. (and math is not my forte)

Amidst the disappointments, dead ends, and uncertainty of my recent paths in life, there's a resolve that has risen up to take the place of a worldly perspective that once ruled my consciousness. A transformation is taking place; that without stillness in every other area of my life, may never have come. Truly, the Lord is directing me in ways I had never imagined.

No matter where this gift.... this mysteriously beautiful adventure we call life takes us, nothing is more important than the source of it all. So much in life eventually fades away, so much comes and goes. But the relationships we build echo into tomorrow, and our relationship with the creator echoes into eternity.

All things come from Him, and all things worth pursuing are good in His sight. It's an inescapable fact is that everything that leads away from Him is eventually a dead end in life. The road to something greater is through seeking His will;... seeking that which reflects God's own heart.

And so one thing that is certain amidst all the doubt in my life. It will from this time forward, aim to be spirit led.

When I first heard the Jars of Clay single "two hands" on the radio, I didn't think much of it. The rest of the album, frankly, spoke a lot more into my life. But the reality is that I've been fighting a battle between two voices in my spirit and in my mind, for years. I've lacked the ability to move forward in so many facets of life because of this battle... it becomes clearer every day what the Lord's intentions were in keeping me on this battleground, without a worldly pursuit to escape into. It's been a trial, on many fronts, and if anything James I (NIV) is a peek into exactly where I'm coming from (and going):

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does. ... Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.

The Lord wants us to be all in. We can't have one foot in the water and one in the sand, so to speak. In my search for a new direction in life, I once started with the ever popular Purpose Driven Life (PDL) devotional. I knew by the first few pages that it was a glimpse into exactly what I was missing. I dove in with the best of intentions, with friends, and the highest of hopes in finally starting a spirit filled dialogue with someone I had wanted to walk with in Christ for so many years. But it didn't take long to see that as much as I longed for my spirit to be in the right place, I wasn't seeking the Lord's heart above all else... I was seeking hers. Big problemo. Inverting those priorities within the heart isn't exactly like flipping a switch, a takes a lot more than occasional prayer. Needless to say, PDL was put on hold... as I knew it wouldn't lead me to any real change without placing Him first. And I knew I could never lead anyone else, let alone a family, without His voice coming through loud and clear above all others. I was so angry, and so frustrated that the companion I had been praying for my whole life was right before me, had been for some time, and I was completely unprepared to move forward with her. To this day I've encountered little evidence to contradict that I gave up a once in a lifetime chance. The Lord brought kindred hearts together, and for what purpose with this result I still cannot say. I know this is all preparing me for something greater, something... real. It's amazing how in the face of all despair, when every worldly indicator says that the best has gone and passed you by, the spirit of truth whispers a familiar promise :D I can't wait to take on tomorrow... and with a little hope that there'll be someone to walk into it with me, in all ways.

So what voices had been pulling me in different directions? No, we're not schizo ;-). My mind keeps seeking what I know I need, but to implant these things upon my heart so that they're an integral part of the way I operate is quite the challenge. It comes down to more than the voice of God vs. worldly reason/desires. It comes down to a mindset.

I consider myself a relatively unselfish person... I enjoy serving others in many ways, and would drop my own priorities to help someone out in a heartbeat. I don't like to talk about myself all that much... other peoples' stories, experiences, talents, and viewpoints fascinate me more than most anything. So i've spent much of my life listening to and evaluating the 'needs' of those around me. But when I take a good honest look at how relatively little insight I have into the psychological (emotional/social/spiritual) needs of those closest to me, it begs the question... where am I going wrong?

There's a reason Jesus died on the cross for us. Well, ok there's something that it exhibits in denying human nature... in forgoing self-preservation. In Jesus' mind... WE always came first, before himself. His instincts were motherly in nature, if you will. The first thought was how to redeem us in the fathers' eyes... how to save us. Not himself.

When I keep tabs of what's going on in my mind throughout any given day, it becomes readily apparent that my mind is faaaaaar too preoccupied with selfish concerns. What do *I* need here, what will *I* gain there. I spend far too little time concerned with the thoughts and needs of others. Deeper needs are given so little brainpower.... I usually stop at the surface. Maybe this is common in society... but it's not ok. Penetrating insight, if you will, is not something you're born with. I wholeheartedly believe it begins with a mindset, and is developed over time with healthy relationships. The key I'm getting at is where the mindset begins; its foundation. Some people are brought up in families/environments that prepare them well for this... and so they transition to bearing greater responsibility in life quicker than others. I know plenty of brilliant people... some who are gifted socially as well. But it's no coincidence that the wisest and most successful people I admire are often the strongest Christians I know. Christianity is not a 'religion'... when you get down to it, it's a way of life, a revelation of truth, and a way of thinking. And the further I dive into it, the more excited I am to go deeper. The bible is not a 'manual' for how to live... it's the truth we constantly strive to follow, and realize with every answered question we're still only scratching the surface.

I'm just getting into this, and I've been slowly writing this post over a week or so. But it's time to rest. 'til tomorrow...buona notte.