thoughts on 30

some of you may not know...but as of 6.1.09 I will no longer be working at multnomah. long story short...it's time to go...time to leave home that has at many times felt to be both my incubator and my prison.  still it has been home. it's time to go..

on 1.26 i turned 30, so here are some thoughts reflecting on the ten years, eight of which have been invested in some form at multnomah. so also these are thoughts looking to the next decade...and each after that. 

(from 1.25)

 things are not as i had hoped they would be when i reached this marker. still, things are beautiful. the road has been exactly as it must have been, accomplishing your purposes even while failing some of my own. ultimately, you have been good in the mess and have been preparing me as only you know how. i would not have chosen the pain in the past 10 years, but in your goodness, you chose it for me. it is good. you are good. these are things my heart could not believe four years ago. today i can say them again with confidence and with hope. in this 30th year i will leave home, and in a strange way i feel the opportunity to reclaim the dreams, passion and vision of 10 years ago--choosing in this new season a risky faith--wild adventure over the lures of safety and security. 10 years ago i staked my life on the truth that I am safer in your will in a dangerous place than away from your will in  safe place. all safety is an illusion...i don't have control. many were fearful for me, but with you i had not fear but eager expectation to meet you in the place that even your people had once abandoned. and i did meet you--in the need, in the brokenness, in the mess--as i never had before. 

it is harder to leave security now at 30 than it was at 20, but this is the life i've said that i wanted and i find myself again with the choice to live it. i don't want to see myself in 10 years living my life in fear--arranging for my own security and barricading myself from the world with a white picket fence. if i'm called to comfort, praise God. i do not seek pain like a suicide, but i also will not avoid it if you lead me to it. the point is that anywhere at anytime i want to follow...and so live with no regret. looking back at age 50 with shattered dreams in the wake of selfish pursuit or deadly fear is a thought that motivates me now to take hold of what you've called me to and created me for. i don't want a bookshelf of dreams lined neatly without ever having been read. i don't want to look back thinking that i was called to something that I did not do and given a dream or vision that I was too fearful to pursue. I'd rather have dreams torn apart and mended-- books with pages ripped to pieces then taped back together--than have a dusty and pristine collection of dreams emptied of all vibrancy and full of only remorse. 

i feel not like the clock is ticking forward, eating my days away, but rather that it flows backward, awakening a lucid delight of youth ideals and the boldness of the innocent. it seems that age often grows fear. i long that age would see my fears ravaged by faith...that I would have greater boldness at 50 than I do at 30. this will demand that i kick against the goads for the rest of my life--fiercely battling all my desires for accomplishment, success, accolade, comfort and safety. it will require me...to battle me. I don't want the life of my choosing because i would choose easy. i want the life of your choosing, for you will choose the truly beautiful.