The Long Awaited Conclusion

Well, here it is the long awaited end to the story. Now would all of you stop sending all those emails? You're crowding my inbox. Hehe...

“As If…

Security in My Place”

I earned my diploma and graduated from Azusa Pacific University in May of 2006. At the time, my wife was pregnant with our second child. We knew that the arrival of this baby would change things quite a bit for us, doubling the child-rearing responsibilities. The 3-11PM hours of my position would mean that Joy would need to care for our children all evening by herself. We took a look at our situation and found some of the factors leading towards a change for me. First, I wasn’t making a ton of money. It was significantly less than Joy was making at her job and we couldn’t make ends meet without her income. Besides, she enjoyed her job and was (and remains) very good at it. So it wasn’t like she was going to stop working to relieve some of the stress. Second, by pulling Joshua out of daycare, we could almost make ends meet without my paycheck. I was experiencing the difficulties mentioned previously, and this, coupled with the evening hours pointed pretty clearly to me quitting my job. So I offered my resignation effective two weeks after the birth of our daughter.

For a few months I was a stay-at-home dad, eventually securing a part-time security position at the Harvard School of Public Health so we could make ends meet. I would work 18 hours on the weekend, checking ID’s at the back entrance to the school. For a part-time job, it paid very well. Actually, it paid exactly what we needed. But after a few months of this it became a bit disheartening. After a while, I started to wonder what in the world I was doing. As I checked people’s ID’s as they entered the school, I really wondered if I’ll ever attain “my” goal. “I’m checking ID’s!!! I don’t need a M. ed. for this,” I often thought! In addition, one of the graduate students at HSPH had previously been one of the Resident Assistants that worked for us while I was a Resident Director at ENC. I always felt a bit awkward checking her ID.

On the other hand, I really liked the students, staff, and faculty at HSPH. When I started working there, I unfairly assumed that I’d be dealing with a lot of wicked smaht, snobby people. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The HSPH community is comprised of people whose collective goal is to rid the world of starvation and disease. Very few of the people graduating from the school leave and make a lot of money. Mostly it’s just the opposite. And a majority of them are doctors. There is also a high percentage of international students. In my experience, the international students are much less pretentious than the American students, and I’ve found the American students to be wonderful. So all in all, it is a great environment in which to work.

I don’t remember why, but my Joy and I decided that it would probably be appropriate for me to begin working full-time again. I spoke to my supervisor, and after a few weeks they were able to find me a couple more shifts to increase my hours. In time, I was promoted to a supervisor and moved to a newly created post at one of the apartment buildings for Harvard. I was now full-time, and making more money than any job I had previously held. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t been shopping for a new yacht, but I’m doing OK.

I was pleased to have a full-time, regular schedule, and a regular pay-check. But I remember feeling little satisfaction other than knowing I was helping to provide for my family. I focused a lot on the challenging parts of the job. To begin with, the post is in the basement of a residential hall for international students at the Harvard School of Public Health. I’m fortunate if I see 5 people during my shift. As a people person, this isn’t exactly ideal. My only contact with the residents of the building occurs from 7-8 AM as they hurry out the door for class. Other than that I’m totally alone. Nobody to talk to but God. It was then that I began to blog, but eventually we lost the internet. (Don’t even get me started.) I also read books, but found myself dozing off. That’s a no-no as a security guard. I began to question myself again. I wasn’t even checking ID’s anymore!

Eventually, I began to consider whether or not this was the lowest point in my career. I had a lot of time to reflect on that. It certainly felt like it. If I didn’t need a M. ed. to check ID’s, I was really over-qualified in a post that didn’t even do that! But as I said, I had a lot of time to reflect on my situation, and I had a lot of time to reflect on the call I thought I’d heard in my life several years back. I began to look at this time differently, and in some ways, I began to view this time as perhaps the most important point in my career – at least up until now. All of this time to reflect on my past and current situation, where I am and where I thought I wanted to be, forced me to consider one question. “What in the heck happened?” My answer – I may have hijacked God’s call on my life.

I didn’t do it on purpose, and it took me years to understand what I did, but if God called me to anything, I failed to realize that it was God’s call on my life, for His purpose. It was never my call. A small misunderstanding on my part makes all the difference in perspective. I don’t think I’m the first person to make this mistake.

In recent days I’ve been thinking about one of the heroes of the Old Testament, Joseph. It strikes me that there are some similarities between Joseph’s story and my own. God had used Joseph’s family for years, so it only seemed natural that God would use him in a similar manner. Joseph had heard God’s will for his life in a dream. I had heard God’s apparent call on my life from a friend. Joseph told, likely bragged about, his dream to his family. Likewise for me. Joseph ended up at the bottom of a well. I ended up in the basement as a security guard. Granted, Joseph’s situation was a bit more perilous than mine, but I can’t help but wonder if Joseph ended up at the bottom of the well and later in prison so God could teach him a lesson in humility. I wonder if that’s what it took for Joseph to truly surrender his life to God’s will. I wonder if that’s what it took for him to relinquish any sense of entitlement because of the family he came from or what he assumed was a call.

I wonder if Joseph ever stopped caring about that dream and began to think that he at some of the wrong mushrooms for dinner the night before his dream. I don’t know. The Bible doesn’t really say and nobody ever really told me. All I ever was taught was that Joseph stayed true to God. Somehow, I think there was more to his experiences than that. God wasn’t simply testing Joseph, he was teaching him a vital lesson. I wonder if God was saying “Hey, Joseph! I’ve called you, any success you have will be because I make it happen. You need to relax, young man.”

You see, today we always read the stories in the Bible with the benefit of hindsight. We can’t help it. In fact, that’s kind of how it’s supposed to be. We learn because of hindsight. It’s always so easy to look forward into Joseph’s life and expound upon how wonderful things turned out for him. With this understanding of the story, I could exclaim that if I act as Joseph did, and always put God’s will first for my life the same pattern will happen in my life and I’ll become a college president. But that wouldn’t be an honest or even fair assessment of my own story. I’m not sure that’s even a fair assessment of Joseph’s situation. We know how the story turned out, but Joseph didn’t know how things were going to end up. I’m not sure the point of the story is that it turned out well because Joseph honored God with his life. I think it might be more useful to understand that Joseph honored God even when his dream began to look like a bunch of hogwash – and I’m sure it did look like hogwash as his older brothers were throwing curses and insults down at him in the well. “How’s your dream lookin’ now, you little bastard?!?!” Even when he was pulled up and sold into slavery, I think Joseph probably had significant doubts about the validity of his dream. I don’t think he was tied up on the back of that Egyptian wagon thinking, “Wow, it’s going to be AWESOME when God gets me out of this situation. People are going to be talking about me for thousands of years!” Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so.

I’m not saying that I feel like I’m a slave on the back end of an Egyptian wagon train. Don’t get me wrong; I’m very blessed. But I’ve come to a point where I have no idea what to make of the surreal “calling experience” I had those years back. It was frustrating and at times depressing to consider that things weren’t working out like I thought they would or should. But eventually I realized that any “grand” plans He has for my life are His plans, and I’m not privy to the blueprint, nor am I the architect of the plans. The fact is, I wanted to be a college president for so long that I can’t be sure God was calling me or if I simply had a strong emotional response to some very nice things a man once said about me. What I do know, as I sit in the basement of a residence hall, is if God has called me to, well, anything, it will happen on His terms. My endeavors to pave a road that God will set before me are futile. I will live my life as if my only goal is to honor God. Because it is, no matter what. For it is now clear to me, apart from God, I can do nothing.

Of course, there is no real conclusion to this story. You can conclude what you want when I’m six feet under. But I’ll say this: I don’t think about a college presidency any more. I just don’t. In fact, I don’t even find if very appealing anymore. It feels strange to say that, because it was such a strong feeling and belief for so long. I will work hard at whatever job I have, when I have it, and let the rest take care of itself knowing that God will tweak things as He sees fit, for whatever purpose He may have.

It seems appropriate to conclude this entry with a quote from Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, by Eugene Peterson. I pray that I approach my “place” with the same spirit as Gregory of Nyssa.

Several times when my place seemed inadequate for my vision of what I wanted to do for God, a story held me fast to my place, the story of Gregory of Nyssa, who lived in Cappadocia in the fourth century. His older brother Basil, a bishop, arranged for his brother to be appointed bishop of the small, obscure, and decidedly unimportant town of Nyssa. Gregory objected; he didn’t want to be stuck in such an out-of-the-way place. His brother told him that he didn’t want Gregory to obtain distinction from his church but rather to confer distinction upon it. Gregory went where he was placed. And he stayed there. The preaching and writing that he did in that backwater community continues its invigorating influence to this day. One of the features of his biblical expositions was the thoroughness and intensity with which he read Scripture as a text for living, not just for truth or ideas, but as a formative text for Christian faithfulness and obedience(pp. 73-73).