While I was working today I came across a book about South Africa. It was about how Nelson Mandela brilliantly used the national rugby team, the Springboks, to help unite the country recently mashed together by the election of the ANC government thus ending years of government sanctioned racism: apartheid. It was an incredible moment and I am glad I was in South Africa to witness it. The memory got me thinking though about something that has been gnawing on my mind for some time. I cant help but compare my life in South Africa with my life in America. Sometimes I feel like I am split in two that one part of me, a vital part of me, is still thousands of miles away separated by the vast Atlantic. I left behind a life that I built on my own. I had friends, surrogate family and a place where I felt like I belonged, and I left it all behind.. but I had to leave it all behind. It doesn't make a lot of sense and I can barely explain it myself, but I know leaving there was the right thing to do. I am convinced of that. Something in my soul was lost while I was there and I feel like I have been unable to find it.
It is a crazy disconnect. I can empathize with Abram, I mean when God tells you to go, you go but it doesn't mean it's easy. Sometimes the decision makes no sense, but deep inside you know it's right. I feel like that a part of me is gone. I don't know what it is or how it happened, I just fell it, and I've felt it for years. Like Baudolino I go from one path to the next, seemingly lying my way from one spot into another, and seeing where the path leads. Sometimes I like the person who I was in South Africa more then the person I am now here in the USA. The Michael in South Africa was cocky, somewhat abrasive, but his naivete about life and the church and spiritual matters are at times a better person then the Michael here in the USA who is less cocky, still somewhat abrasive but tempered with a better understanding of himself. The SA Michael was sure of himself, knew where he stood in his relation to others, grew and matured in the things of God and everyday life, gave himself wholeheartedly to the things he was doing because he believed in them. What a far cry USA Michael is from that person. Always thinking. Always questioning. Always wondering if things will ever turn in a direction that seems more favourable to him. I don't believe in what I do any more. That naivete is gone.
So I stand on the fence looking at the person I was and the person I am, always testing, always comparing, and always wondering what might have been, unable to focus on what is and what should be done. Don't get me wrong I learned some valuable lessons and am grateful but I can't help but wonder what it was all for and what is it worth. I know God has a plan, at least I believe he does. I may not see all of it or even know any of it, but it does not mean it does not exist. I'm just tired of the unknowing and the questions and I want to know the answer to the questions in my mind that spring up from time to time. Maybe I'm being too harsh and to hard on myself, but hey, it's a blog after all and these are the thoughts and feelings I'm having at the moment.
In many ways I have been feeling the same way. I look at the early "Erichristian", and see a young man that stood in awe of God and His workings in his life and in lives of those around him. This is a person that I want back. A young person not caught up in church politics and better ways to do ministry. A person who's spritiuality wasn't centered on his vocation, but rather his vocation was centered around his spirituality. A young man that wasn't caught up in postmodernism, emerging, emergent, he just loved God. However, that young person was also a bit judgmental and legalistic. So in that regards I prefer the "me" now. So I sit here thinking about my past and my future, which I find to be an unnecessary burden more often than not. So I strive to meld the two of us together-sans the judgmentalism and legalism-and wonder where all this is leading me, as my future seems to-pardon the cliche-shrouded in mystery.
ReplyDelete*pardon the blog within the blog*
What is it about age or experience working in the church that blunts the wonder we feel as younger men? ( and women if any are reading . In some people's mind the lack of wonder would even be labeled spiritual maturity, but is that definition also flawed because in our dealings with the divine of all the characteristics that should forever mark us is one of wonder and awe? I don't want to be an old man thinking about how great the things of God were when I was younger. I want the feeling who I was and who I am to combine and the me that is to take the best parts of the me that was and hopefully it will the form the me that should be.
ReplyDeleteWell said. Let us hope and pray that what we are feeling now, is the path to that destination of balance.
ReplyDeleteI understand the feeling your describing, but don't have similar examples. Only that I can look back on eirlier parts of my life and say "I liked that better" or "those times were good", but I also think our minds are much better at remembering the good, and burying the bad. At least my mind is exceptionally good at it. I think there is both good and bad in this. As far as "Always wondering if things will turn in a direction that seems more favorable", I think the key is moving forward. It's way too easy to ponder on what was, or what could have been. Personally I've been avoiding thinking about these things all together (which is not good for extended periods of time), but the only solution is deciding what you want to do, and doing it. It could be as simple as just doing what is before your hands.
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