The Time of my Life!

Mary Oliver wrote, "...are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?" Introspection is my default, my screen saver state. When I am not actively processing something, I tend to musing. At times I think of lofty, amazing, enviable things. Many times I think of what could have been, others I am silly, and yet others straight ribald. I do not know when I started checking on whether or not I was Living.

As a child I read a lot and longed for adventure. I came a point were I realised I had enough imagination to make worlds and I did. I learned to speak in different voices, I was asked many times who I was arguing with while I was in a room by myself. As this spilled out of my private life I was told to grow up and eventually I started to do that. I began to strip fact from fiction. Live the fact and fancy the fiction. While I was in my worlds, I lived.

As a teenager I longed to be more daring (I think I still do) I did one thing that (decent as it was) people who know me now have a hard time believing I did. Sanktifyd Ganxtaz was some of the most fulfiling time of my life. I hung out with these guys, performed rap music all around my home town. We held and were invited to concerts and shows...it was great. Then we had to grow up some more, we parted ways. While I was Sanktifyd, I lived.

For the last several decades I have filled my mind with all kinds of ideas. From all these I have distilled the model portions and discarded the base. My ideas of adventure, fun and life have changed and continue to change. I am ever shocked when I realize that my peers are the movers of the world. I look at my 'little' life and with Mary ask if I am breathing at all?

John Eldredge asks, "Do you want a tropical beach or the North Sea?"  Though I have always opted for the North Sea, there are many days when I want a vacation.  Adventure is because it has an inherent danger therein.  A life well and fully lived is fraught with peril and uncertainty, dark days, longs cold nights but, perseverance until victory comes with the morning light.  If Frodo lived and never left the Shire, there would be no story.  Think of it, any story you have read, seen or heard; the good ones had conflict so thick, yet carrying however faint a glimmer of hope for a brighter day.  There would be resolution, catharsis came and soon after it the credits.

This is a somewhat random thought process, but its my blog - I always thought life would be easier if I could physically faces all my troubles.  Granted I am not built like the warrior I think myself; I fancy it might be easier.  When you lick someone good and proper, you walk away and they lay where you left them.  They get up and normally do not bother you anymore.  Ideas and thoughts are not defeated so effectively.  They are never injured.  My enemies are many, potent and patient oh so patient.  Lies alone has been around since the beginning of time, he can always wait me out.  Yet if he was an old man, I would beat him down and by the time he had enough extra strength ibuprofen to get back up I would be long gone.

I love the idea of danger, adventure and a life.  The reality is grueling.  It leaves me eviscerated every time I run the gauntlet - college, MT school, being single and somewhat pure, marriage, now graduate school and the binding theme: walking a life worthy of Christ's calling.  The times of my life, are the ones I never want to relive.  Ironic huh?