Urban Idealist

Most of us live our lives in the deep end of pools. We stay busy every waking minute treading water to keep our heads above water, our arms active, and our legs kicking against the water. While many of the issues that we need to deal with rest on the bottom of the pool 10 feet below us. As long as we keep treading water, we’ll never have to deal with them. The funny thing is that it’s only when we get tired of treading of water, or get a cramp, that we end up meeting our issues on the bottom of our pool. And sometimes we don’t even know that there is anything on the bottom of the pool that we need to deal with.

Lately, life has shown me that there is another option to treading water all of the time. Move to shallow water. The thing about shallow water is that my issues are on the bottom of the pool…around my feet all the time. I’ve found rest from treading water, but found a lot of other work to do while dealing with what usually hides at the bottom of my pool. Sometimes people think, “You should get back out into the deep end and keep up with the business of treading water. It’s obviously more productive than standing there.” But I’ve come to see that ‘just standing there’ amidst my issues is work in its own right, just a different kind.

In my current state, I’ve moved from just standing on the bottom with my face above water to standing in the shallow end with just my ankles in the water. This has certainly gotten me some looks. But here’s the thing…the deepest part of where I’m standing is just 1 foot below the surface. The deepest corners of who I am are right there for me to see…and for other people to see.

What sparked this picture in my head has been my extreme ’sensitivity’ lately. The littlest things seem to hit me at deep levels…my deep isn’t too far away these days. I’ve discovered that becoming more aware of the deeper parts of my life has also made them easier to get to…and faster to get to. This has caused me to have to deal even more with the stuff that has come up. Like:

I put my value in what I do, not who I am in Christ.

I let my value get decided how other people think of me, not who I am in Christ.

I am afraid that if I’m not unique and creative then I’ll lose my value.

I am addicted to justice…for other people. I have an unhealthy gage on what ‘fair’ really is.

I am afraid that if I don’t take what I think I deserve then I’ll never get it…and I need it.

I am afraid that people don’t really believe in me…and I need them to.

Can you say trust issues?!? Do you see how God is teaching me to let go of control? Do you see the very real core issues that I deal with all the time? Can you see how God has pulled me to the shallow end to deal with this before releasing me to the deep end again? Can you see why I LOVE GRACE so much?!? This is actually the hardest work I’ve ever done. Pray that I’ll rest in this and not default to treading water in the deep end to escape dealing with this stuff.

I was talking with a guy last night over dinner and the inevitable question came up, “So, what are you guys going to be doing?” We’ve gotten this question a lot lately…and with good reason because we have lots of people in our lives that care about us and want to know.  

But as we were talking I realized that at this time in our lives we are actually living in three different worlds that each present their own unique challenges to process. We are still trying to process our past few years. We learned a lot of lessons in round 1 of living in Europe. We learned the type of lessons that one can only learn through hard life-experience. And these lessons take a while to take root and to be lived out in a healthy way, not out of the pain that actually caused the lesson to be learned. It may sound a bit dramatic, but it is hard work that doesn’t show up on the outside right away! We are so thankful for the present time we have to work on this.  

And the present presents its own challenges. Right now we are trying to figure out what we will be tangibly doing over the next year. We are still trying to get somewhat settled after half a year of traveling and living out of suitcases! We are looking forward to sinking our lives into something while we are here in Portland.

And then there’s the future. This seems to be the one that everybody is so curious about…including us. (Why do we get so concerned with the future?) The future has it’s enormous challenges because it’s influenced by the past and the present. We have ideas about what we want the future to hold, yet at the same time we don’t want to play God and pretend we know exactly what is going to happen. Thus making the question hard to answer.

One of the most important things in our lives right now is to be surrounded with people who see the importance of the past and the present in our future and give us freedom to be whole people and deal with all aspects of our lives at this time. I can’t say enough how much I believe that we are right where we need to be right now.  

The one common theme in all aspects of our lives’ time continuum is that we have hope in them all. Hope that our past is being redeemed. That God is living with us in the present encouraging us on. And that our future will be full of ways give ourselves away for God’s redemptive work.