More Than Conquerors: Spin Cycle

Sitting here on the carpeted floor in my room in my apartment in Queens, I think of all that I don't know. Some days and in some ways, it seems I have allowed my ship to sail further away from the heart of who I am supposed to be - and in admittedly rarer moments, I understand that I am nearer to shore than the clouds and gusts of wind would have me realize.

For starters, here I am, typing words onto a screen. Typing, writing, it always feels like home to me. My heart, my mind, my fingers, my thoughts -- they are all connected, and probably in the purest form I allow them to be when I consider all the filters and mind games and distractions of illusion and falsehood I allow to corrupt and pollute my purest thoughts turned to words turned to actions. But here, on the carpeted floor in my room in my apartment in Queens, right now, I don’t have to answer anyone, and I don’t really have to think. I don’t have to be politically correct, or defend myself or my choices. I don’t really have to do much more than check my laundry in a half hour, and I don’t even have to write - but I choose to, and because I choose to and don’t have to, I feel myself closer to those sandy beaches.

It makes you wonder if that is what adulthood largely is - choosing things on your own, a series of endless choices, all the while hoping to choose things that are closest to right. When I choose, I aim to please my Maker, the Author of Right, the Planter of my desires and Orchestrator of my circumstances. The One who ordains these casual afternoons of silence where there is normally a steady streaming influx of turmoil and noise most other days in the world and in my heart. In these moments of quiet, living inside of these deluded terms and notions of adulthood we so naively and haphazardly toss about - these are the times I feel most like a wide-eyed child, needing more of Him, needing less of everything else.

Sitting here on the carpeted floor in my room in my apartment in Queens, things aren’t perfect. I wonder when things will be different, when I will hold the ones I love in a way that doesn’t feel like a stranger passing through, when we’ll really scratch beneath the surface, feel that life abundant in this life present, when we will reach that time when we aren’t all scrambling to protect ourselves, terrified of penetrating our worlds and making ourselves feel worse because sometimes, truly, we cannot imagine what worse even feels like, unwilling to take the risks of disturbance. I wonder when I’ll feel satisfied that I’m doing what I can, that I’m living in the freedom of Jesus to the best of my finite ability, when I will fully accept the grace and forgiveness I have been given in Him and act like it.

But sitting here on the carpeted floor in my room in my apartment in Queens, I also know that this displeasure is what leads us to a deeper awareness of where it is we find this fulfillment. This wrestling between flesh and spirit and emotion and faith and dirt and being made brand new is the human experience in its absoluteness. It is what brought the footsteps of Jesus onto the soil of our fragile earth. It is the very grounds and disturbance through which we have been saved.

Sitting here on the carpeted floor in my room in my apartment in Queens, I know that there is a day where we will see the culmination of our wounds lifted high and shattered by the blinding radiance of the return of our Savior. Where we will know with a quiet pleasure and react with just a nod of our head that no aspect of our experience was for naught. The definition of empty will perplex us; the idea of endless toil a knock-knock joke without an answer.

There will come a day where we will retain all that was good here and forget all that was not. Where we will miraculously be the same loved and cherished boys and girls we always were but often failed to see-- children and souls with something worthy to contribute just for being born, having the capacity to both feel eternally blessed and to eternally bless.