Insomnia

I can understand not sleeping before my first real sermon. I was nervous. There was a pretty big mountain to be climbed the next day and a LOT of adrenaline running through my system. I can even understand the subsequent nights of later sleep because I stayed up so late on Saturday and for some reason that always inhibits my ability to sleep in a timely manner unless I have to get up extra early a few day in a row. Of course if I spend the next few days waking up two, fifteen, and forty five minutes before my alarm clock goes off, my body then thinks I'm good to go and limited sleep is a good thing. Thus this blog post.

It could be that as the quarter draws to a close and I actually come to terms with how much homework I haven't been doing (like undergrad like graduate program, crap.) I'm getting more than a little stressed out by how much crap I have to get done by this Friday, and then again by the following one (at least to research papers, 2500 words, neither of which I've done more than pick a topic on, and that for only one, a journal I need to catch up on for the last eight weeks, eight-ten books I'll need to at least kind of skim in order to summary/apply to my life, and at least two reflection papers, all before the ninth.)

But oddly enough, lack of finished homework is not a thing I get particularly panicked about. I'm stressed by the work load on top of everything else my schedule entails, but I know I can handle it, it'll all get done (although definitely not to the best of my ability, which irks me) and I'll make some kind of grade out of it. My bigger concern being scholarships, doing better in grad school than I did in undergrad, becoming a real live actual adult in some sense of the word and actually managing to live into the call God has for my life, if I'm even doing that part of this right.

Yea. That's where I'm at.

God has called me to the church. To be a pastor of some sort and to change the way we do things. Not because my way is the end all be all or because I have all the answers, but because I am open enough to his message and his voice that I'm seeing the world a lot more clearly than I used to, and as much as it's not all roses and magic and rainbows and bunnies, it's not all death and destruction either. Black and white don't exist in my world anymore. Everyone lives doing the best they can, and oddly enough, no one's best is good enough. That's why JC showed up in the first place.

As much as I love that God gives me big insights and dreams and hopes and goals and talents and things I love, it terrifies me too.And the great thing about him is he's big enough to hold all that wonderful terrible rip your hair out tension gently and with an amazing amount of tenderness. He knows I don't get it. That I'm easily frustrated, especially when I want something and can't have it. Sleep for example. And yet he holds me there anyway.

Dimitri Martin has a bit of sketch where he talks about how evil ice cubes are and how they all wait at the bottom of the glass when you're being so careful to keep them there while getting that last sip of water out of a cup and then all spill out on your face at once in order to make you look like an idiot. The ice cube commander has a rather military voice as he commands his fellow frozen fiends. "Hold brothers. ...Hold. NOW!"

Sometimes God feels that way to me. All I want to do is hit some poor unsuspecting sap in the face and have a good laugh, and God is holding me back. Making me wait for other ice cubes to get their acts together so we can all attack in unison. (I have no people to fill the other parts of that metaphor, so please don't take it as pointed. Thanks)

And not only is he holding me back, he's changing the battle plan. I'm all set to go in for a pincer strike, and suddenly God goes, "But what about a full frontal assault." To which the obvious response is "If you wanted a full frontal attack, you should have asked for it before we got up here. It's way too late to plan that now. We'd never talk to all the troops in time." And to which my actual insomnia attacked brain says, "Ok, cool. Change of plan, I like it." Which I would be fine with, if it only happened once. Or even just once in a while. But God has an excellent way of assuming that I want my life to be as hard and confusing as possible. Thus proceeds the following:

(Yes Carly, I know I've already switched subjects twice. That's how stream of consciousness works. Sorry)

Two ish weeks ago I went to a conference which a lot of you have already heard about so I'll keep this bit brief. At said conference I learned two things about my call. 1. I am currently being called into full time church ministry, which both not where I feel my gifts lie and what I think God has spent the last year preparing me for and 2. This call will mean at least temporarily giving up all the hopes and dreams I have for arts based worship programs for kids and youth potentially with adults thrown in somewhere.

All of the above I was surprisingly ok with. I had (and have) lasting attachments to the glorious arts filled road I think God will eventually lead me down, but I had a fairly easy, if slightly teary eyed, time letting it go and putting it in God's hands. I came back from the conference. My mini Jesus high (which I was entirely unaware of at the time) wore off. I spent Thanksgiving break at home with my family and then gave my first ever kind of almost real sermon at my home church in TC (I'll get the video up eventually maybe.) I came back to Seattle, the sermon Jesus high wore off. I emailed an old pastor about a potential scholarship opportunity. Officially requested registration for candidacy. Registered for Winter quarter classes at Fuller. Worked my crazy yet fulfilling internship. Hung out with kids. Hung out with people my own age. And then went to coffee with my coworker/mentor/friend Dani.

The thing I love about Dani is that she asks me insanely hard questions and gives really great things to think about. A lot of which has made it on this blog if you haven't already clued in. This week my task is hard because an immediate answer is impossible. Do I really want to do this? Do I really want to devote my life to God and even more so the church in this complete a way? Do I want to be stuck in an infrastructure that dictates where I serve, in what capacity, and for how long? Do I want to be a pastor forever? Do I want to be a pastor at all? Do I actually want to give up the dreams I have for the sake of obedience? If I actually give said dreams away will I get them back? Will I still want them? Or will this be one more thing in my life that I give up on because it gets hard, or I get bored, or some other newer shinier toy happens to catch my eye?

Thus the insomnia.

The most terrifying part of all of this being that I can't do any of it by myself. I need God. There's no other way around it. As much as I am an independent, intelligent, occasionally witty, mostly kind of almost self confident human being I don't have the strength to make this journey by myself. But even knowing that, there are times when I get sick of having God around. How many times do I have wander around following him through the dark before I get to see where I'm going? How many times do I have to be called in a different direction when I was sure I was going the right way? And how much am I going to have to leave by the wayside as my ridiculous tendency to over pack weighs me down so much and so often that the way ahead seems impossible?

But my life is not about me. Not really. I mean, I should be happy where I end up. I should love what I do. I should live without regret. And I truly do believe that such a life comes from following God's plan. Which might sound to some like a great way to get burnt out and hate what you're doing for the rest of your life. But is it really suffering if it gives you life to do it?

Jesus lived his life trying to talk sense into people that didn't get it. Even his closest followers, friends, and listenees had no idea what he was talking about most of the time. Not even God can explain how life here should work to us. We honestly cannot comprehend how to just shut up and get along. Somewhere along the way that particular set of wiring was thrown clean off our neuro pathways and we've been failing to reconnect the dots ever since. Jesus proceeded to die for us, then had to come back and explain it one more time because the people that were supposed to carry the Good News out to the world were moping around not doing their job. Very little of Jesus' life seems very life giving. Least of all the dying part. And yet being God he saw a much broader picture than the rest of us. And I can't see him being to terribly upset at his lot in life when he can look down at me and know that I can honestly and confidently tell you that I know God loves me because of what he did when he offered himself on the cross.

I'm not saying that everyone should be just like Jesus and suffer and give up everything for the world at large. I know I'm not cut out for that. If I were Jesus, the world would be doomed with a capital D. Luckily God is Jesus, making the situation better on the whole than if I were in charge. And yet I think there is a sense of sacrifice we all make when we enter into the love, family, and hope that we find in Christ's death and resurrection. I'm choosing to give up dreams of Disneyland employment and a terribly unlikely stint as some kind of movie schmuck. But it's a choice I get to make. I hope it's a choice that I will continue to make until the time when God says, "Thank you for waiting. You can have this back now." And if that time never comes, I pray I will still always make the choice to sacrifice my plan for God's and not the other way around.

And in the meantime I pray for sleep.