Each year brings potential for what I call "way-points", events that mark major turns on the path of life. Way points such as marriages, graduations, or funerals make pronounced impressions on one's memory of a year and commemorate new directions. Such objective markers lend substance and perhaps a sense of meaning to personal existence.
For me, 2010 was bereft of way-points. Twelve months passed like a blank span of trail without forks or guide posts, admitting little to measure how far I had progressed in that time or where I was going. Life seemed an ongoing transition into the unknown and I had no choice but to keep walking and wondering where the path would lead.
Let us go back to January 1st. As the clock struck midnight, I was on Santa Catalina island kneeling in a chapel. At my side was a dear brother with whom I had traveled years before, who afterward made his residence on the island. Now he had invited me back for New Years, to celebrate the start of my biggest adventure yet, a four month solo-trip around the United States. As the festivities mounted in the streets, nothing seemed more desirable to me than gathering with local Christians to meet the coming year with prayers for divine blessing. I needed all I could get for what might lie ahead.
The next day I hiked to a prominent ridge overlooking the Pacific. Westward the waters spread endlessly. To the east lay a vast Continent. From my place on this ledge the planet seemed a great, geographic and personal opportunity. Out in that expanse, I felt there must be a way-point waiting to be found; some self-defining period of life, whether an event, or path, or person--anywhere and everywhere. Perhaps I would find the chance of a lifetime, "become something." Yes, and if there was a proverbial gate on the horizon which could lead into a more ideal state of life, then I would go find it, or at least busy myself in the attempt. Anything was better than sitting at home waiting out the ellipsis of a meaningless existence.
Departing across the States wasn't easy as I hoped. Piled on my shoulders was a great deal of cumbersome baggage, mostly of the existential sort, which I insisted on carrying without the help of others. You see, on the one hand I had reason to be happy. I was now enjoying the freedom of having just settled an immense financial debt, one that had taken years and two full-time jobs to defeat. In fact, had you asked me in the summer of 2009, I would have said life seemed to be lining up nicely. On the list were plans to attend seminary and become engaged to my long-time best friend. Everything appeared to be headed in a certain beautiful direction. Almost at once, however, those expectations were dashed.
First, my relationship reached a point of impasse, made all the more excruciating because of the benign nature of the woman's decision not to receive my hand. The fact stemmed from faultless personal complications, for which I can't blame her. It was as simple as the fear of why, despite the incredible depth and dearness of our friendship, a sense of romance never arrived for her as it did for me. For months she held out hope of some internal change that would convert her feelings toward me from that of siblings in Christ into something more akin to lovers and matrimony. The feelings did not come. In the end, the woman I longed to spend my life with had to acknowledge she wasn't interested in pursuing anything beyond close friendship. The devastation was mutual. Years of shining expectation and affection collapsed suddenly upon themselves as a black star, converted into a void which pulled my worst griefs and fears deep into myself. The bludgeoning sadness of rejection was only magnified by the fact this revelation blindsided me on the very eve of my planned proposal.
To escape the reeling heartache of that situation, I might have sunk my attention into formal studies. However, one little book on the issue of Christian Baptism reopened my confusions on the subject. Out of conscientious objection, I suspended my application for membership in the church was attending; in doing so my pursuit of seminary and vocational service in that denomination was cut. In those two months it felt as if the floor boards of life were wrenched out from under me. I didn't know where to go or what to do with my passions, or whether I would experience the same love again. For a moment I saw my existence as one colossal frightening, empty slate.
Twenty-six, debt free, and depressed. With all of my options open, I did what every feckless man of ambition does to overcome his sense of purposelessness: invent a vacuous, but imposing goal in the form of an epic physical odyssey. I resolved immediately to travel down the Pacific Coast on a bicycle, alone and on a dime.
Before pedaling off to probable doom I wanted to pay last regards to loved ones. For two months I embarked on a mammoth Greyhound tour. I visited friends in Northern California, Utah, Maine, and Iowa; stood in Times Square at sunrise; slept beneath the Sears Tower in Chicago. I tried for the first time to feel at peace being alone. The final destination of this leg was Wisconsin. The person I had come to see was none other than the woman I had been so in love with ~ was still in love with. Despite conflicting emotions, I wanted to affirm that my care did not cease with the impossibility of her hand. In doing so, I embraced the fact that love goes beyond one's own desire to be loved in a certain way.
West I went until arriving in Olympia, Washington, with two bags of camping gear and a used bicycle frame. Knowingly or not, I was about to thrust myself into combat with solitude, practical fears, mechanical frustrations, and physical doubt. So I began a test for which I had neither trained nor had any comparable experience.
The next two months seemed longer than whole years combined. Each day was full of countless fresh events and scenes. Unique impressions filled my memory like photographs piled into immense stacks. I spent weeks alone in the Olympic forests, scaling snow trimmed peaks. Nights were wiled away in my tent reading by light of a gas lamp. Books of scripture, theology, philosophy, their contents filled my mind as I rode in thoughtful isolation. And when more solitary places could not be found, I slept behind churches or in roadside ditches. Now and again I abandoned my bike and trailer on a hillside, covered in brush, to hike strands of deserted coast for days at a time. No company would dare come but God and party of paperback immortals. None could have understood me better, I felt.
In heavy solitude I learned prayer by desperation and default. No ear was present while I traveled but the Omniscient. No hand was near to assist but that of Omnipotent God in whose palm I am held. Sometimes my prayers amounted to pleas for .35c to make bus fare to way-side waterfalls; requests for a simple bag of rice or fruit; then, belly full, my eye would look ahead. I began to ask peace for my future; above all, I petitioned God to let it be that one day I would bring glory to my Savior; at present I seemed only capable of making obnoxious noise. In retrospect I see the kindness of God in attending to my feeble half-prayers. Every pressing need was met. I never went without food. I never suffered bodily at the hand of a foe. Had want or pain been allowed to cross me, I grew to appreciate the truth that God's bitter medicines bring spiritual health.
My adventure was abridged by an insect. One-hundred and eighty miles from San Francisco I was bitten by a tick which infected me with Lyme disease. While this was dealt with at no cost (thank God), treatment necessitated an end of cycling for the time. It was just as well. I had already gone almost fifteen-hundred miles and injured my tendons significantly by an arduous pace. I had also accomplished what I set out to do, without knowing it: to accept my present situation as the gateway I was seeking to a more meaningful life.
For so long I had looked to the horizon for some phase of life which I supposed would bring greater meaning; something I envisioned as my best life, whether that meant marriage, career, ministry, whatever. Yet now I began to sense my need for God to dismantle former conceptions of self-identity. Deeply embedded was a view of self
as ultimately isolated from the person of Christ. It was as though Jesus were
somewhere just outside my conscious being, the me-who-is-me, recommending advice for my
consideration. If I acted, the action was at last mine to
determine, mine to do. My responses would amount at some future time to a meaningful life.
Somewhere on the path I learned a lesson. The portion of life which one aspires toward for a sense of fulfillment does not begin at marriage, vocation, recognition; nor must it wait for death. Man is not given divine breath merely to pant after his own interests and the common order of society. The life and identity which God's people once had without Christ died with Christ. In receiving Jesus' Headship we become members of His mystical body. Christ stands victorious over the Goliath of self-identity. Our natural, self-obsessed heads have been severed once for all in the mind of God and lie buried somewhere in the tomb, if only we will see it. Christian life and identity are found only in the truth: "Christ in you, the hope of glory."
Through the indwelling of the Spirit and union with Christ through faith, life is fulfilled in recognizing one's self-identity as indivisibly united with Christ's purpose and person. The word is sharp, dividing between soul and spirit, but no edge can discern the division between a Christian's true identity and Christ Himself. I am not Christ, but Christ is all that accounts for anything in me. I am not the Head, but I am part of His body, the Church. My life is not mine but His to live through me. My whole being, every present moment, is given so that by the Spirit, Christ lives a multitude of lives through the medium of saints in the earth. The gateway of meaningful life is to accept that, "it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me." The gate is not on the horizon; it is at the cross.
* * *
During the summer I rested. The ride had torn my Achilles tendons and damaged my knees pretty badly. Slowly I regained the ability to walk properly and by July I was able to summit Half Dome and Yosemite Falls, arriving before dawn to watch the sun rise over the most glorious valley on the planet.
In September my father shattered his ankle in a fall. Complications due to his Multiple Sclerosis required him to be hospitalized for two months, and when he was released my mother and I became his full-time nurses. Dad has yet to be able to move about independently and requires assistance for most basic needs and exercise. Helping him is time-consuming, heart-aching work but I have been graced with willingness, even great cheerfulness to do it.
October arrived and I turned 26. More than a year had passed since my former relationship ended. The pain had subsided enough so that I could begin considering life with a different person at my side. About that time, almost beyond my belief, another woman graced me with her interest. We shared some fine moments in the possibility, some sweet moments I won't forget. Though nothing finally came of the episode, I was able to sense how much I had grown to accept, even to enjoy the future opening up to me.
Incidentally this brief dating relationship prompted a renewed study of those doctrinal issues which had formerly barred my entry into a confessional Reformed Church. I went back to the books and the result was a clarified view of the sacraments. With great joy I applied for membership at the assembly I had attended since my conversion and joined soon after. Once again the door opened to prepare for vocational ministry.
Incidentally this brief dating relationship prompted a renewed study of those doctrinal issues which had formerly barred my entry into a confessional Reformed Church. I went back to the books and the result was a clarified view of the sacraments. With great joy I applied for membership at the assembly I had attended since my conversion and joined soon after. Once again the door opened to prepare for vocational ministry.
Over the course of these twelve months I did not come to many way-points, at least in the objective sense. But as time marches on and I wonder where the path leads, I am content to have learned one lesson during 2010: Life does not consist in satisfying cultural or personal expectations of success and meaning; life is to receive grace and to be a conduit of Christ's love to others, while awaiting His glory in the world to come.
The year ahead is a clean slate. I look forward to what the Lord might write thereon.
The year ahead is a clean slate. I look forward to what the Lord might write thereon.
God bless you in 2011.
Was this helpful to you? Please share. Thanks!
© Michael Spotts:. 2010
———————
You are permitted to reproduce and distribute this article in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and that you do not charge any fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For printed copies, as well as web posting, please include the following statement:
By M. Benjamin Spotts:.
Copyright © The Open Life
www.theopenlife.com
Titus 3:3-8
© Michael Spotts:. 2010
———————
You are permitted to reproduce and distribute this article in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and that you do not charge any fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For printed copies, as well as web posting, please include the following statement:
By M. Benjamin Spotts:.
Copyright © The Open Life
www.theopenlife.com
Titus 3:3-8
1 comments:
Awesome journey! Thanks for posting.
Post a Comment