Blog 16: A Donkey's Butt

Ok.

I’ve been a very bad boy.

I have posted since May? April, if I’m being honest?

For those of you who actually care about what I say, I’m sorry for that. Not sorry for you caring, sorry that I’ve let you down. It’s been a busy summer, but really, that’s just a lame excuse. I could have found time to do this. I enjoy doing this. I am so happy when I see that someone has actually read this, and even more, when someone says, “hey, what you just said wasn’t total feces.”

It makes me feel all warm and tingly in my intestines.

The problem is, I had(have?) been feeling as though I was(am?) swimming in the icky waters of misguided purpose.

The real irony of that is that, it was the great summer that led me to that feeling.

I spent a huge chunk of the summer at summer camp. As usual. I love it. It was even better than last year for me. And last year was great. I felt like what I did made a difference. I felt like I didn’t have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t just to get people to take me seriously. I could just be me. I was working with mostly teens so, maybe that means I’m a tad immature if “being me” is a lot like being a teenager. Hmm…

But I had fun. And I saw great things. And young people were coming to me and asking questions on their own without prompting. And we had great discussions. And people gave their lives to God. I was once again reminded that there is hope for our young people.

Then I had to come home. Immediately, all the sincere searching was replaced with ridiculous church politics. People trying to make statements, not find God in their lives. Not everyone, of course. But it doesn’t take too many before you start sharpening pointy objects and making plans to use them.

One day, after a particularly ridiculous afternoon listening to some particularly ridiculous lunacy, my wife and I came home, walked in the door, stopped and looked each other in the eye, and at the exact same time said, “It’s time for us to leave.”

I can’t speak for her, but for me I was realizing, I’m a youth pastor. With no youth. I am in the wrong place with the wrong people. It’s not my strength. It’s not my purpose. It’s not my blah blah blah, whatever.

Whine whine whine, is what I did.

I started thinking about the last 6 years of my life and trying to figure out what it had to do with anything? Why get cancer twice in four years? Why did it suck worse the second time? Why have I had to suffer so much physically? (understand, I’m the guy answers these questions for other people…) Why am I in a place with people who make me insane? (Not all of them. Not even most of them.) Oh whoa is me. My life is hard, why can’t things ever go right? Why can’t I just be in a place where things work and my I don’t have to have the responsibilities that I have and I can just focus on the stuff that ACTUALLY MATTERS… instead of all the lunacy that normally deal with? Why why why?

I spent a fair amount of time looking and praying for a new place to be. I even went to my boss and let him know that it needed to happen. I even cried. A lot. I think my boss is convinced I’m insane. It’s too bad he won’t see this. Maybe I should send it to him. Hmm…

Anyway.

Nothing came of my desires to go somewhere else. I’ve slowly been resigning myself to the idea that, for now, this is still it.

Tonight, my asked me if I had seen that my friend (insert fake name… here.) had started a blog. I said, “Huh, really? I hadn’t noticed. I’ve been too self absorbed in my life to care about anyone else’s.”

Actually, I only said the fist half of that.

So, being the good friend I am (stepping aside to avoid the lightning…), I pulled up and read it. First, not only is it good, which didn’t surprise me, I noticed something that I had largely not paid attention to recently.

Other people have rough lives too.

Which led me to another conclusion.

I’m a self-absorbed donkey butt.

This guy is one of my best friends. We met the first week of seminary. We became great friends and basically did everything together for three years until we graduated. Video games, classes, skipping classes… you know, the good stuff.

It turns out that, while I’ve been absorbed how much my cancer sucked, and did suck, and how much my life can be crazy, and it can be, and how much I want things that I can’t have, which I do… HE has not only been worrying about keeping his pastoral life in some sort of normal range, same as me, but also been trying to keep his marriage from exploding into a gory mess of awful. And while he’s been trying to keep THAT together, he’s been praying to God that his wife won’t follow through on the urges to kill herself AND their infant child. And while trying to work through THAT, trying to come to the grips with the fact that, the status of her depression may or may not get much better.

I believe in honesty. So when I tell you that there were serious moments near the end of my chemotherapy where I wanted to die rather go through anymore, know that I’m not exaggerating. It was THAT bad.

Every day.

But then I got better. So far. Now, it’s just a memory. A bad one, sure, but a memory. I’m not still sick. And those churches I’m so frustrated with? They are growing. God is blessing there. They aren’t growing because of me. They are growing because God is making it happen. I could take another entire blog to explain why I believe that. I’m watching God do great things here in my district all the time.

And instead of being excited about it, I’m whining about things that are transient. My life is easy. It’s good. I never have to worry that one day I’m going to come home to find my family dead. My biggest worry is whether or not I will get a phone call and have to listen to the crazy lady chew my ear off for 20 minutes about how she washed socks and had a bowel movement. (true story)

Sure, I sometimes worry about whether I’ll get cancer again. But that’s not much different from everyone else. “Gee, I hope I never get cancer like that Tony guy. That seems like the opposite of fun.”

In reality, I’m a selfish, self-absorbed child, complaining about how I don’t get my way, and get to do the things I want to do the way I want to do them. Sure, I have friends who’s lives are seriously stressed and they are scared every day about something truly important. But hey, that’s not important, right? Why should the life of my friends matter to me?

Ugh. I’m such a schmuck.

I don’t even know that that means, but I’m sure it’s true.

And because of this, I’ve focused more on me, instead of doing stuff that matters. Like blogging, for example. It may not matter to most of you. But even if there is only one person who feels it makes a difference to them, then it’s completely worth it.

Everything is transient. Good things and bad things both. Life, is transient. It’s too bad I haven’t been living as if I believe that. I teach every day that the thing that matters is most is self less love toward others.

I’m just not sure I’ve actually learned that lesson. At least, it seems like I haven’t.

For this, I apologize. You may ask, “Why?” The answer is simple. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Selfishness impacts everyone around the offender. I can’t be selfish without someone else being negatively effected by it.

I recently taught that the reality of Salvation is selfless love. From God to us, and us to Him and others.

I asked myself if I felt this described me.

I haven’t answered myself yet. I’m truly afraid of what I might say.

It’s easy for me to sit back and see the flaw of other people. To see their problems and dissect them and analyze them. But it’s down right painful to do it to myself.

Maybe if I did it more often, it wouldn’t be so bad. Or maybe, if I did it more often, I wouldn’t have to do it at all. I’m not actually sure that made sense. But there it is. I said it.

After all of this, what is my point? Why do I bother to tell you all of this? Is it just a plea for sympathy?

No. Sure, sympathy feels nice, but it doesn’t actually solve problems.

When you try to live life in a vacuum, all you do is create a black hole. You create a zone of awful that just sucks the people around you in. Being self absorbed makes the life of the people around stressful and miserable. It creates tension and conflict. I’ve seen that. I’ve seen my wife and I fight over stupid… stupid stuff. I’ve seen myself get mad over absolutely ridiculous things.

If this describes you, I have good news. You have the power to do something about it. You can actually change this. I recommend prayer and surrender and determination. But the understanding that is needed is, the thing you do next is your choice. No one can make you stay where you are. No one can make you stay miserable. No one can make you live a life you hate. And whether what’s need is a change of location, or just a change in attitude, it’s still a choice that you can make.

I have a choice I have to make in my life. No one can make it but me.

What choice are you going to make?