The longest blog entry ever (so read it!)

(Originally published on my old MySpace blog.)

You know how people don't like to do the job they do when they get home from work because it's the job they do all day? Like the dishwasher who lets his plates and cups stack high in his sink, or the policeman who lights illegal fireworks for his kids on the Fourth of July or the landscaper whose lawn is a mess or the pastor who swears and lets his kids turn into venomous heathens.
That's me right now. In lieu of writing something pretty like I have to every day for a paycheck, I'm just going to write a stream of consciousness and fight the urge to edit myself as I go along. Good luck with that.
I'm reading "Blue Like Jazz" by Donald Miller. It's incredible. If you haven't checked it out yet, please do, it will rock your world. And for me, it inspired me to write more. I really do like writing, and not always about things particularly profound. I guess I don't really know what good it does for anyone other than myself, but that's got to count for something, right? Oh yeah, the book also rocks the casbah because it really hits at the place I am in life right now… let's get into that.
I've been doing a lot of thinking about everything. It seems that I'm on the verge of something — perhaps its internal, perhaps it's external, who knows. My guess is that it's internal.
Many people know that I grew up a Lutheran. With apologies to my friends still going to church in that particular denomination, it's pretty conservative as far as worship goes, and the most wild thing they do is clap after a REALLY, REALLY good performance by somebody. I'm sure there are many of other times people want to clap in a Lutheran church, but they don't because you don't want to be the charismatic one to start clapping. Nobody wants to be that guy. Except maybe my stepdad. I think he's like that.
But anyway, my foray into the Pentecostal world has definitely been challenging. As lots of you know, I'm pretty involved in East Hill, although honestly it doesn't feel like it lately, but that's another issue. Anyway, I do worship, I'm in a small group, blahdy blahdy blah. I love the way they sing and jump and clap and all this stuff. I'm an energetic guy, that suits me. The preaching's incredible too. But what I have struggled with since before I ever went there was the concept of "gifts of the Holy Spirit."
Look, I want to believe that there's something more powerful and lovely than just the normal day-to-day crap we go through. I think I might have even had a Pentecostal tonguey moment before. Maybe a few of them. But the whole prophetic ministry is just a real mystery to me. I have a hard time with men and women standing up in front of people, telling them that they have a "word from the Lord." I'm sorry, I've just seen too many corrupt people use "a word from the Lord" to their own benefit. And the skeptical, liberal side of me asks, "Who are you to speak for God?" At the same time, I want to believe it, especially from people I admire such as Ted Roberts — a man who, although not perfect, is real, and really has a thing for God.
Anyway, about a year ago, I was in the dumps. Depressed. Feeling hopeless. Christmas was a bust. I never was able to enter into it, which was double-depressing since it most people know it's my favorite time of the year. I just couldn't get into it. In retrospect, I can see that as a new editor, I was out to prove myself and hadn't yet developed the skills to say a very important thing to my contacts: "NO." So Christmas sucked, and I was feeling sucky. I hated my job. I wanted out. I scanned the online job listings every day, praying LOUDLY for a way out.
By this time, I was furious with God, something I still struggle with from time to time. I confessed to many people that my relationship with God sucked, not because I was doubting His presence or anything, but because I was just pissed. I felt the life being sucked out of me by a job that wasn't really giving back. I'm a lively person, so you know it had to be bad. Even when I was a dishwasher, in the lowly pits of water, grease and ketchup, I was happier and more of a light for God than I was at this time. I was mad because he wasn't talking to me, he wasn't moving in my life and he wasn't, most importantly, giving me WHAT I WANTED.
I'm grateful to God every day that I at least have the gift of introspection. Despite myself I can look inward and have a good diagnostic of what's going on. I had to do something, so I scheduled a counseling appointment with Pastor Ted — actually, my beleaguered wife did — so we could talk through these things.
I was nervous as can be when the day came. It was a Wednesday night in late January, shortly after Ted gave his midweek message. We talked about what I was going through and my feelings and my anger towards God and how all the life was being sucked out of me, when he asked a very pointed question, one that still haunts me to this day: "If you could do one thing for the glory of God, what would it be?"
I couldn't answer him. I racked my brain trying to come up with something. Surely me, a guy who has dreamed big since I was three (I wanted to be an astronaut) had something he wanted to do with his life more than anything! I didn't. It was like the dream that I had which was journalism had, like an old cherished Cadillac, died on the side of the road and I was stranded somewhere in Kansas or north Texas, lost without hope.
The best thing I could come up with was that I wanted to write in a way that would lead people to Him. And sing. Nothing specific. How can you get directions to your dream if all you have are crappy MapQuest directions that get you to the right country, but don't specify an address or even the right city. My dream, it appears, is vague. It still is, and that's the problem I have.

I bet you were wondering when I was going to tie this into my beliefs about "prophetic words" and all that. Well, what's been bugging me is that at the end of our conversation, Ted said that he felt "in the Spirit" (that's the Holy Spirit, for those of you not fluent in Christianese) that it would take me "about a year" to really come to terms with that vision. At least I think that's what he said. He might have said it would take me about a year to step into that dream… something tells me he might of said that. Or he might have said it would have taken me about a year to figure out that dream. I really should have taken notes.
After that conversation, I actually felt peace about my job. It definitely didn't last forever, but in the month to six weeks after we talked, I was in a good place. But we're fast approaching a year after that discussion, and I don't think I feel any closer to establishing a dream or a vision than I was a year ago. I think I'm less frazzled overall, except I do find myself checking jobdango.com from time to time. Maybe I'm just complacent. Maybe I just overanalyze things too much.
But the fact is, Ted "prophesied" something would change in "about a year." I'm not so sure anything has changed. I don't know. I say no to more things. Is that the big change? But what about THE DREAM? Is there a dream? Did Mother Teresa have THE DREAM? Did Billy Graham? Or did these people not worry so much about setting up the chess pieces and just went with the flow and fell into whatever role God pushed them? Well, if that's the case, it seems much more peaceful. I don't know if I have the patience or the faith yet to be like that.
Laying in bed last night, I arrived at a big conclusion, though. Savannah and I were planning our trips for the next year, and we looked at each other and said, "We probably go on more vacations than anyone we know." Well, we quickly recanted that because we both know that Josh and Angela Hjertstedt go on more vacations, because Angela's a teacher and Josh is currently in a job where he can jetset at a moment's notice. But we come in second place!
Anyway, it hit me like a ton of bricks: if I were to leave this job, I'd probably have to cross off at least half of the vacations from our list. No normal, 9 to 5 job is going to let me trade working Monday through Friday for, say, Monday through Wednesday at noon with a smattering of work on Friday, and the rest of the time made up Sunday night. That's just not normal. I really do enjoy a degree of freedom here. Even as I type this, it's nearing midnight and I'm sitting in my office (which is just 1/4 mile from my apartment). At what other job can you do this? It's like I own my own business, but without the money I'd probably make.
And that leads to another thing. Although I have amazing freedom to make my schedule and take trips and whatnot, I think the pay might not be enough. This is a fear because Savannah and I both believe that she needs to stay home and be mom. That's all she's ever wanted to do, and I totally support that. But with that comes a harsh financial reality. I don't make enough to support us completely. So in that regard, maybe it would be better, if and when we have kids, if I do take off, because we wouldn't have the money to jetset anyway. Food for thought.
But overall, I think I might have incredible freedom here. Freedom to have a positive work environment with a guy I can definitely say is a friend. Freedom to write what I want. Freedom to make a newspaper what I want it to be at a young age. Yeah yeah I get it. I'm sure any college journalism grad would love just to get a Podunk reporting job at the coast (which I did), much less get an editorship one year out of the box.
It's been hard. The responsibility is suffocating at times. I've cried many times. I've cursed God and I've praised Him. I've doubted God and I've embraced Him. The sad thing is, it depends on which day you catch me. But I feel like, as I said, something's about to change. Is it my subconscious telling me that something SHOULD change just because a pastor said it would? Or is something really stirring inside of me? I think I'm starting to truly ask the questions about my faith that matter, and I'm finally starting to question why I believe what I believe and why the heck anyone else should care.
I struggle with how God can possibly use me in a day-to-day basis when my job is to be objective. How do I witness to people when I have the potential of turning them off to me, therefore ruining my journalistic credibility and jeopardizing my access to people? How do I do it? I know Jesus worked as a stone mason (not a carpenter… King James got it wrong, look it up) for the first 30 years of his life (that's a long time to wait before setting the world on fire), but I just wish we knew more about what He did with those years. Did he preach? He was called rabbi. Did he display revolutionary tendencies? Did he lose a masonry contract because people didn't like all the God talk? It's something I think about from time to time.
But I want to make an impact. I am so two faced. I want to change the world, to do something that means something. My greatest fear is to die without doing anything of eternal value… but at the same time I'm apathetic. I don't want to be fake, and I surely want to know why I believe what I do before I can possibly broadcast that to others. I hate disingenuousness, and so does God. I want to do something, but at the same time I'm unmotivated. I just don't know what to do, and all the cliché responses of, "Don't worry, God will show you in His time" just don't work for me anymore. I hate clichés. They just make the cliché-giver feel holy and clever.
So, my friends, this is what we call an impasse. I'm at a place in my life now where I am free, but I don't feel free. I am happy, but I'm miserable. I am accomplishing much, but am accomplishing nothing. I am wanting to get out, but I'm wanting to stay. Maybe the answer is that I'm supposed to come to a place where I figure out that being here is OK, and that there are other ways to serve. Maybe I should just take my George Foreman grill down to downtown Portland on Burnside and cook sausage patties for the homeless. Maybe I should perform my music at The Portal Café. Maybe maybe maybe.
And maybe this realization is what Ted was talking about all along. Maybe it wasn't necessarily a job thing, but a change of priority, a change of focus. Shifting around the deck chairs on the Titanic? Perhaps. But then again, perhaps the realization is that I just need to stop treating God like a genie and more like a lover. I'm working on it.