dontsqueezethejj.com

This has been a little bit of a trying semester.  I’m sure if I’ve spoken to you recently then you are well aware because I am a really good whiner.  The first real semester of my PhD was much tougher than I anticipated and I decided to teach three classes this fall on top of my normal job.  Not the sharpest spork at Taco Bell, but I’m really close to making it through.

One thing that has been one of the “fun” times I’ve allowed for myself has been meeting with two friends to read some of our recent writings.  We do a little bit of critique, mostly encouragement in areas we like, and have breakfast at a local cafe.  We dub ourselves The Weaklings, after Lewis and his friends The Inklings.  Most of my writings that I have been sharing are old blogs that I am reworking for a book I may be doing for college student devotionals.  Not sure it will ever get to that point, but it gives me a nice distraction in the midst of writing papers that deal with regression analysis and eigen values.

In the spirit of the season, here is one that I recently reworked from a while back.  If you are still reading, thank you for sticking around.  I hope to see you soon.

Inspired by a quote from Wilber Reese and Jamie Wooldridge.

“I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please, not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don’t want enough of Him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.”- Wilbur Rees

I long for the warmth of the womb, not the constant state of rebirth that often characterizes my life. The romantic notion of seasonal living that is full of constant flux and new starts no longer holds the novel exhilaration that once spurred me on to extraordinary adventures.  Now, the idea of going through another change, another period of rebirth, just makes me tired.

When do I get to be wrapped in a snug warm place, protected from all that is the world?  When do I get to be carried and sheltered?  When do I get to have someone provide for me?

A few years ago a friend of mine gave birth to a healthy baby girl.  The proud parents gathered the family to welcome this newborn into the world.  Tears were shed and joy overflowed.  Years of doctor consultations, medicines, invetro and meetings with adoption agencies ended with the arrival of this precious package.  While the new parents celebrated, my friend who just gave birth, sat in her room, alone, separate from the family, to contemplate what the last nine months had been about.  She had been a surrogate, a womb for a family that needed one.

She reminds me of Mary.  A young girl, not aware of what the future would bring offering herself as a vessel.  She wasn’t asked for money.  She wasn’t asked to work.  She wasn’t asked to just show up.  She was asked for her womb… space.  A piece of herself to hold the Divine.  When the angel first approached her she was troubled, not sure what was going to happen.  And yet, when called upon her answer was,  “I am the Lord’s servant.”

Looking back at my friend’s sacrifice I am more easily able to picture what it meant for Mary to carry a child that belonged to Another.  Both could have said no, but didn’t.  Both faced not only being shunned, mocked, outcast for being pregnant with a child that was not her husband’s but also discomfort, pain, and possible death from the birth. And yet in light of all of this they offered space and belief.  Space for a life and belief that the life growing inside of them had the ability to change the world.

It is way too easy for me to settle for living in the womb.  I want to be held in the esteem of the Divine instead of offering space for the Divine to reside.  Longing for the warmth of the womb, I create my own protection from the world, blocking out the needs of others and sitting in my own comfort, not wanting change.  I’ve been through the birthing process and it is not fun.  In fact, it is dirty and messy.  With the potential of discomfort, being outcast and having to live a life that is no longer just about me, I too often choose to say, “I am not the Lord’s servant.”  And by doing so, I miss out on being a part of changed lives.

Recognizing that rebirth actually brings new life, I must step back from my own selfishness long enough to acknowledge that real life is less about settling for the safety of the womb and more about becoming the womb myself.  And maybe, just maybe if I get over myself long enough to choose and offer myself as a womb, then the Life and Light that resides inside of me may even have the potential to change the world.

I recently lost not only a friend, but one of the true champions in my life.  By looking at his Facebook page I am learning that he played this role for countless others as well.  As Donald Miller put it, “David didn’t like the spot light, Instead, he was a spolt-light that shone on the people around him. He lifted them up. He was their biggest fan. He believed in them when nobody else would or could.”

I met David while doing comedy at a youth camp in Louisiana and I instantly loved him.

We shared laughs and hearts over beignets while avoiding playing marathon games of Mafia. We kept in touch over the years, mostly through e-mail and blogs, but our last conversation took place much like our first, switching between laughter and deep challenges over fried food.  This time it was at Buffalo Wild Wings.

A few people who knew us both said that he is who I would be in 20 years in personality and in looks.  Hearing that was one of the highest compliments I could have ever received.  We may have been about the same height, but my feet could never fill his enormous shoes.

We shared a heart for the arts, for laughter, for the outcast, for justice, and for God.

I could go on and on about how amazing this man was, but more and better has been said by others with eloquence that I could never muster.  The best eulogy I can give is to live my life in a way that shows just how much of an inspiration he was to me.  I will write more because he encouraged me to write.  I will love more because he showed me how to be a friend.  I will live more because he left us too early.

Part of the inspiration is to begin blogging again even though his encouraging e-mails about how a story made him laugh are no more.

I have included below some of the words others said about him in an article published in an Austin newspaper . My life’s goal would be to live in a way that people would say half as much of these exact same things about me when my time has ended.  I still really want to be him when I grow up someday.

May my life be different because of the way you lived yours.  I will miss you David.

“He believed in breathing. He started every service by reminding the congregation to just breathe.

He believed in crying. Journeyer Bob Carlton said David made crying cool.

He believed in showing up. For somebody’s gig or to help someone move or to sit and talk. His friend Dave Madden described him as “frumpy David” in his blue jeans and ball cap, just this guy who would be there. And there was something holy in that.

He believed in generosity. He invited Brian Hill, who was just out of college at the time, to live with him rent-free when he had no direction and encouraged him to try his hand in ministry.

He believed in big miracles. After his friend Don Piper was in a car wreck, David stood at his hospital bed and coaxed him back from death, a moment Piper would later describe in his best-selling book “90 Minutes in Heaven.” A book, Piper said, that would not have been written without David’s encouragement.

David believed in small miracles, too, like what might come from encouraging a fatherless kid in Pearland to try writing. That kid was Donald Miller, now a renowned author who dedicated his best-selling memoir “Blue Like Jazz” to David.

He believed that if they worked together, people could stop human trafficking and forced labor.

He believed in taking out the trash at church because the trash wasn’t going to take itself out.

He believed in the sacredness of an unlikely space for a church (a warehouse in a North Austin industrial park). But he also believed that the people made the space sacred and that church was where the people were.

To be sure, he believed in people. All kinds. Troubled kids, homeless families, bright-eyed babies and starry-eyed newlyweds. And a middle-aged minister named Rick Diamond who took a risk by leaving the church establishment to build a different kind of church community. Gentiles decided to join Diamond in 2005.

This may sound obvious, but he believed in God and in the Bible, a book he knew inside and out, and he believed that Jesus was first and foremost about love.

David was a man who “loved hard, whose arms were wide open,” said his old friend Milton Brasher-Cunningham, who got to know David decades ago when they both started in youth ministry. “There weren’t any hooks in his love. It wasn’t what he was going to get back. He just had love to give.”

Diamond said David gave that love indiscriminately. “(He) believed that each person is the beloved child of God, regardless of whether she or he is a Christian or not, young or old, whatever color, straight or gay, whatever politics, whatever denomination.”

I stayed home from work today, sick and lacking much energy or ambition.  For some reason I started reading back over some of my older blog posts.

I started this blog four and a half years ago, wanting a way to communicate with people when I went to Africa and visited my aunt and uncle working in the slums.  I was traveling in an improv group all over the US and trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing with my life.

I seemed to have lived a lifetime over these past four and half years.  And I wonder why I’m feeling so worn out and tired.  There were some posts that brought back some amazing memories, blogs that brought a few tears, and blogs that re-challenged  me.  It was fun to see where I’ve been and where I’m going.

There was one post in particular that I think I needed to be reminded of.  I posted an article I wrote for CIY.  Here is part of that article.

“In the seventh grade I was “in love” with Connie Sperling.  She was beautiful, athletic and popular, all things I looked for in a future wife. I was so sure of our eventual partnering that I wrote “J.J. +Connie” all over my Chuck Taylors.  However, there was one little problem, she never spoke to me.  I’m not sure she knew who I was until someone told her about the stalker with her name on his shoes.  Oddly enough, things didn’t work out for us.  Turns out that sometimes it takes more than beauty, athleticism and popularity to make a relationship work.  Who knew??

When looking for Mr. or Mrs. Right, some people know exactly what they want and go for it.  For the rest of us sometimes it takes trial and error.  When we look for what we are supposed to do with our lives we tend to go through the same kind of process.  No doubt some people sense a “call” on their lives from a very young age and never waver from it.  For the rest of us it takes longer to discover who we are, what we are good at, and where our gifts lie.?

The root word used to get the word vocation is the same word from which we get voice.  Maybe finding your vocation is not about finding your call, but all about finding your voice.  Sometimes that takes trial and error.?When I look at scripture I don’t see God pushing people into specific careers, I see Him calling people to a new way of living.  He doesn’t call people to be doctors or lawyers, He calls them to be a specific kind of doctor or lawyer: one who acts justly, loves mercy, walks humbly with God, is a peacemaker, merciful, righteous, and in all things, loves.?Finding your vocation is about finding the job that will allow you to speak mercy, healing and love into a hurting world with the loudest voice possible.

That may take trial and error.  So, go experience life.  Take trips, join clubs, take on different projects and jobs.  Find your voice, even if it takes a while to find your vocation.  But what do I know, I’m just a singer/PR guy/missionary/weight room supervisor/youth pastor/political aide/comedian/professor who still needs voice lessons” — Inspired by Connie Sperling and Shane Claiborne

Here are a couple quotes from posts I wrote fairly early on that brought me encouragement and challenge on this day of sick.

“I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please, not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don’t want enough of Him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.”- Wilbur Rees

From Eugene O’Neill’s play The Great God Brown. “Why am I afraid to dance, I who love music and rhythm and grace and song and laughter? Why am I afriad to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of the earth and sky and sea? Why am I afriad to love, I who love love?”

One of the things I was reminded of today is that it is still OK to fly.

“When God closes a door, sometimes he also nails the windows shut and yanks you through the keyhole.” Proverb from Jim Johnson as told by Kevin Greer.

In many ways, this is how the last year of my life has felt, especially the last few months.  It’s hard to explain the lessons I have been working through in humility and patience, love and grace.  When I see many of the ones I love going through all the upheaval, struggle and pain I have witnessed recently, it is hard to complain about my life with any kind of legitimacy.  But I can still say it has been rough.

I won’t bore with the whiny details, but there has been loss, hurt, sickness, depression, exhaustion, and pain.  But there has also been great gain, healing, joy, energy, and rejoicing.  Through it all, I can’t help but think that the keyhole I have been traveling through is refining me in a way that I will not recognize for some time. But it still hurts.

If I take away expectations and just live in the actual experiences of my life I quickly recognize it is charmed.  The perfect match of excitement and intrigue, fun and purpose, all packaged in situations where I am surrounded by people I most love and who most  love me. I don’t get how I am so blessed to live a life movies could be made of with daily happy endings too good to be true. But right now, I still feel a little of the darkness and rough edges of the key hole.  

I wanted to soar out the window into the clouds with ease and a smile.  That was not to be my path.  I wanted the door to remain open to a world of possibility and promise.  That was not to be my destination. I wanted to sit in the comfy air-conditioned room with plush couches and easy access to the kitchen.  That was not to be my end.

I knew I’d be moving, I knew there was another place to go, I just didn’t expect the keyhole.  And expectations can be crushing when held up against reality.