O’Hare Airport, Chicago. Sunday, May 23, 2010. 7:29pm. Final destination: Colorado Springs. I sit here alone, waiting for yet another flight. To my left, an elderly lady glances frequently at the clock, restlessly waiting for her plane. A few seats to my right, a couple of teenage girls giggle, enveloped with an inside joke. But what draws my attention the most is the young African-American couple sitting adjacent to me. One of them is reading the latest issue of USA Today while the other steals quick glances of the game via the monitor mounted in the ceiling above my head. Both of them are preoccupied in their own way, lost to the rest of the world. I look up from my typing and can’t help but wonder where they are going and what has brought them here, seated not five feet in front of me. For what purpose are they traveling? Why this airport? Why with each other? What drew them into a relationship in the first place? The latter of these questions catches me off guard. Food for thought.
Something about filming for a nonprofit ministry adds bliss to my otherwise habitual daily routine. The idea that I can do what I love to do, all the while bringing praise and glory to God is encouraging to say the least. It makes me glad that I have found a hobby that is both financially supporting and a blessing to those around me.
It’s now 5:27pm, six days have passed since my last flight, seven since my graduation. I sit here, in the Summit cafeteria, alone with the exception of a fellow staffer who spends her free time completing
college graduation thank-you cards, something I should consider doing soon. For now, I am simply enjoying the silence a cool Colorado afternoon brings. It’s odd knowing that only a week ago I was walking across stage in front of my homeschool graduating class of 124 and their families. Now, 680 linear miles from home, I find peace in prayer as I share my thoughts and frustrations with God.
Yes, there are a few frustrations bottled inside, seeking a voice. This blog seems like a decent enough place to work through these trials. My change in role from ‘Lead Staff’ at the largest camp in Iowa to ‘Summer Intern’ in a small hotel lost in the mountains of Colorado has been frustrating. Not being able to see the friends I have accumulated over the past thirteen years of camp leaves a longing inside. Through different camp directors, God used my two years of employment to teach me about leading by example. I loved my time at Hidden Acres, and I know that if I were there this summer, God would teach me so much more.
So why am I in Colorado? One reason that prominently sticks out in my mind is that camp was beginning to become a distraction from God. I was becoming so fixated with the camp experience, I lost track of whom it was that desired my praise. God caught onto that and like the jealous heavenly Father He is, He relocated me. If you’ve read my past few blog posts, then you know that God spent the past nine months of my life stripping me of everything I held above Him. He broke me of almost everything I held in high regard, including the value of my own life. Though, as it turned out, there were still things I held to be of greater importance… Camp Hidden Acres, friends, and family, to name a few. Thankfully though, God didn’t burn down the camp, kill off all immediate relatives, and have my friends disown me. Instead He moved me to a place where I can no longer be directly distracted by any of these things, and for that I thank Him. Moreover, I praise Him for knowing what needed to happen in my life and seeing to it that those distractions were removed!
It’s time to start fresh. New location, new friends, same God. The last of these is very encouraging. The fact that God is also here in Colorado is nothing short of comforting to someone who has had a lot of change in his life. Though, to be honest, now that I’ve had to ‘start over’ in the field of making friends and creating a legacy, I feel distant. Not distant from God, by any means, but almost secluded within the realm of my own office space. I desire a good friend. Someone with whom I can simply talk or share my ever-changing thoughts, dreams, and doubts. Yes, I am making new friends and enjoying the simple conversations that take place on a daily basis. Yet something is missing; or so I think.
A few stray staffers enter the still dining room from a side door, throwing me friendly smiles. Soft piano music resonates in the background. I wonder how one could ever feel so out of place in this close-knit community. Nonetheless, in some ways I do feel out of place, possibly even alone. Though, not in fault to Summit or its caring staff. I love it here at Summit and now that I am away from “ordinary life distractions,” I am able to take another step back in examining my life.
With my best friends elsewhere, I find myself relying a lot more on God as a daily comfort. And while He already knows my every thought, I am now sharing more of my experiences and sorrows with Him via prayer. Whatever time I used to spend talking with David Mahlum and others is now spent chatting with God about daily experiences and what He is doing in my life. This is a good thing, yes. But it doesn’t lessen my desire for someone with whom to converse on a deeper level.
Having just graduated from high school, I find numerous people tend to ask the same question of me: “What do you want to do with your life?” For most students, this short, oblique question is usually responded to with a quick direct answer, normally involving the name of a school, a planned major, or the idea of “taking a year off.” For me, I am hesitant in my response. I don’t want to simply tell them, “I don’t know.” For I do have a couple of ideas and a generalized plan involving digital media production, but at the same time, I don’t want to bore them with some long run-on sentence about where God is working in my life, and how He brought me to where I am now, and how I hope to serve Him based off of these experiences, and where this may eventually take me. Because, to be honest, come September when my time at Summit Ministries reaches a close, I am unsure specifically what life will hold for me. Though, I am comforted to know the One who does.
This reminds me of the best reply I have heard yet to the “What do you want to do with your life?” line of questioning. It was directly after my graduation ceremony, at a time when you ask pretty much every graduate there with the hopes of remembering at least three of their responses. I was casually making my way toward an exit when I bumped into an old camp friend and tossed the question in her direction, with the anticipation of a standard, habitual retort. Instead what I got was this: “Andy, I want to glorify God.” That’s it. No school name, no ostentatious plan of moving to California and becoming a heart surgeon. Just, “I want to glorify God.” I paused. How do I respond to that? “Oh, that’s nice. Have fun with that”? I honestly didn’t know what to say. But I will say that I had a hard time falling asleep that night, as my heart and mind were opened yet again to the question of what I am truly living for.
What am I living for? Jesus? Yes. Myself? Yes. Alas, I have found a comfortable compromise in which I live for God by day… and when the proverbial sun has set and the line of sight from coterie is distorted… For whom do I live? Who holds my heart??? I find that when I am alone, I begin to question where God has me in life. Understand that rarely do I doubt what it is God wants me to do in life. I know Colorado is where God wants me, and I know how He desires me to live. My problem lies in my reservations toward fully following that desire… and by my hesitance, I question His very omnipotence. I sound silly just saying it, yet that’s what I’m doing. By sinning in any way, I am saying, “God, I know what you want for me, and it sounds good and all… but I think my way is better.” How naïve. How foolish. To think that my ideas could in any sense be better for me than His design. But that is what I am asserting when I stray from the path He has laid before me.
So, for whom do I live? For whom should I live? Many times in living for myself, I am living for Jesus. I find that my desires line up perfectly with what God desires of me. And while this isn’t always so, it is a place I am overjoyed to find myself in often. I want to live as Christ lived and love as Christ loved. I find pleasure in going out of my way to glorify Him through the helping of someone in need or by going above and beyond in my work. I enjoy giving of my time and love being able to praise His name through my gifts and talents on a daily basis. If only now I could be fully satisfied in Him alone. Sadly, though, my heart desires more, and I easily become impatient waiting on God’s perfect timing.
As weeks pass by and I continue adding to this post, my mind constantly reminds my heart that “good things come to those who wait.” And while I don’t actually believe that statement in its entirety, wishful thinking and continuous prayer cause me to repeatedly quote this fallacy to myself as I fall asleep each night. Yes, waiting is a virtue. Waiting upon the Lord, though, can be tedious and, at times, heart breaking. The other day, I looked around me and saw friends in abundance. Though, at some point I must have blinked, for things have quickly changed. People disappeared, friends moved on. I moved on. This new relational inconsistency in my life is inconveniently painful. Constantly making new friends only to move on for the process to restart brings me to a point where I feel as though I walk alone through a sea of indifference. Yet, I move on, making the most of the time given to me. Wishing… praying for someone with whom I can share my life and all of its bizarre events. Someone consistent.
New friends around me have dated, are dating, will continue to date. Yet I wait. Sometimes I wonder if it’s even worth it, to be so conservative, that is. I question my choice to reserve my first kiss, the habitual “waiting-not-dating” policy I live by, and my generalized abstaining from intimate relationships with girls, period. I forget that what God has in store for me could possibly be better than simply living for the moment. It’s then that I wake from my stupor of self-pity and look around me once more. I know that God has me at this specific place in life for a reason and that my singleness has opened many doors, both in the aspect of location and of emotional freedom. It has given me time to refine myself and better understand how to love God with my everything. I also see the girls around me that, like me, are outgoing, but not going out. This only makes it all the more worth it, knowing that I don’t wait alone. So, how long will God have me wait? A few months, a few years? Either way, I know that it’s worth it. Yes, Christ is worth the wait!
Allow me to close this blog with an excerpt from an annual succession of letters, namely the “My Beloved” series I am writing to my future wife. The following is taken from what I wrote last year:
“My Beloved,
I am writing you this letter of my own accord to better inform you of the extent of my love for you. As I write, I know not who you are or if we have even met. Nonetheless, I think of you daily, dreaming of the day we do meet, waiting on the Lord’s timing……It seems that not a day passes without me wondering about the times we’ll share and what adventures shall await us in our new life together. I tend to ask God who you are. What are your character traits? What are your hobbies and interests? Will we like the same types of foods? And enjoy the same style of music? Do you also enjoy video production? What do you look like? Will any of this even matter? Oh, how I long to meet you!…
…My Beloved, I pray for you every day: That your determination to wait for me would be even stronger than my determination to wait for you. I pray God will use this time we are apart to prepare us for a life together. That you will be the wife I need and I the husband you deserve. Together fit to lead a family towards Christ…
Waiting for You,
Andrew”