Four Years.
Today I rediscovered my desire to blog, to write, to pour out a little of my soul to whomever deems that it is worth reading. My purpose or use of the blog is highly therapeutic, although I am a very big fan of the ability for those who show interest to be able to keep up with me as God continues to take me all over this world of His.
Recap: It has been four years since I made my last entry. Four years in which I have been through a lot, been shown a lot, met a lot of people and said goodbye to many. I have safely returned from Thailand, spent a summer working at Carolina Creek Christian Camp, graduated from ACU with my undergrad, and am currently writing on along the coast of Portugal, where my parents now live. As for the near future, I will soon be returning to Abilene to start a MA in Communication and work with Residence Life for another year. God is still leading me, I have just been forced to accept that He just seems to like giving my one step at a time.
As I look at the title of my blog, I feel the need to elaborate for a moment on just why I named my blog “…the ramblings of I…”. If you know me at all you may well already know that I don’t tend to take myself too seriously, I have no problem being naming the pink elephant in the room, and I have no false confidences in myself as being one filled with wisdom for those who are ‘beneath me’. This blog, as I mentioned before, is more therapeutic than instructional.
Awesome. So now that that is out of the way, I can perhaps give you a brief update on some of the things that God has been working with me on lately.
Over the past two years I recognized recently just how busy I allowed my life to get as I tried to take advantage of every opportunity and many responsibilities given to me – if you know me, you also already know this – in an attempt to consistently do my best, never foregoing an opportunity to serve, whatever that looks like. However, what that has meant for me is that I subsequently found myself with very little time to just enjoy life, to process my heart and my thoughts, or to consistently spend time with God where I wasn’t the one talking. The problem here is not one that is limited to an absence of that time either, it managed to permeate into every area of my life and caused me to disappoint myself and others, perhaps more than even I am aware. As a result of this discovery, I intentionally planned to spend the entire summer in Portugal with my family doing nothing that would be put on my resume or fulfill some prerequisite. This summer has been set aside for resting, for being alone, for being with family, and being with God.
Not that the entire summer has been spent reading through the Old Testament, but I have enjoyed a few refreshing ‘Aha!’ moments that have stayed at the front of my brain for weeks. The first ‘Aha!’ moment actually came before I arrived in Portugal, but while I was on a retreat the week after graduation. It seems that so many in our society today seem to think that they must be doing something all the time, never taking the time to truly rest and let our bodies and souls be rejuvenated. Instead we have developed this metaphor about our lives as though we are automobiles that can run and run and run until empty, sit still long enough to be refueled, and then run and run and run some more. Yet the author that presented this to me provided another model. Referring to those who walk with the Lord, in Psalm 1,
“They are like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.”
David uses the image of a tree to describe us. Trees don’t move around all the time, shifting shapes to meet different needs. They don’t have too! They provide both food [in season] and shelter without changing shape. They stay in one place, growing roots deep enough into their community to provide the sustenance needed to survive and to keep the tree grounded when storms come. The tree provides fruit in season, typically one crop a year, which means that the tree rests and prepares for the majority of the year in order to provide good fruit. Yet, in seeing this description, it is so contradictory to the image I have heard most of my life. Where did we get so confused? The bottom line is this, God designed all of creation to have periods of rest – God Himself rested – this should tell us something. My goal has been to intentionally make time to rest, in order to be fruitful as God intended. But my question, is are you getting the rest that God intended for you?
I am off to pack and then fly over the ocean to be on the other side of the world by tonight, modern technology is just amazing.
Will be writing more soon, it feels good to be back.
Adam
