I've been thinking a lot about how hard life is.

It's been a rough month for everyone. Folks suffering through cancer, layoffs, relationship losses, and passings in the family. Stories of confusion, backstabbing, heartbreak, and confusion are bubbling up right and left. What do we do in this despair?

The wife of my old pastor was recently diagnosed with Stage IV lymphoma. It crept up on her, silently and suddenly. Reading emails my pastor sent, I was struck by how raw the feelings of fear, loss, and pain were.

But far over it all was a tone of resilience. "We've called this theme of this season of our lives 'Don't waste your cancer'" I hear how determined they are to face this silent killer with faith and continue running this race with endurance.

This has been a bit of a rough patch for myself as well. I'm not quite sure how to describe it.

Yesterday at small group we were talking about Jesus and his suffering on earth and on the cross. How in the end, we can endure great suffering because we hope in the eternal (the things unseen) and, powerful and reassuring to me, that Jesus himself endured our suffering. He knows exactly what it's like.

Don't waste your cancer. What's it like to hope instead of being paralyzed by fear?

Don't waste your suffering. What's it like to look beyond ourselves to others and Jesus instead of descending into a pit of despair?

I want to know this. To hope, to rejoice, to continue on the Mission. We may not know it now, but we know it nonetheless.

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Sunday, I gave myself a pretty bad haircut. It was a really hot evening, and I was impatient to be finished. Well, buzzing trimmer in hand (with no guard), I misjudged the angle of my head and on my way up, and… whoops!

In one fell swoop, I had a crater on the back of my head. Further inspection with a mirror revealed the horrifying truth: It was bad; I could give the ozone layer a run for its money. And really, all I could really do was laugh.

I think this was the icing on the cake to a long trial period in my life where I’ve just realized how uncool and incompetent I am. I’m not very suave. The words that come out of my mouth can be Shockingly Dumb. I can be forgetful, I can be insecure, I can be totally, totally awkward. I’m a Neanderthal.

In short, I can fail in more ways than I ever thought I could, and I’m not as well put together as I thought I was, and that’s been super depressing to come to grips with.

I’ve been learning the hard lessons of who I really am. I’ve had my pride knocked around a lot. Between myself and Sarah, I’ve discovered that I’m a Total Idiot when it comes to emotions and communication and all that good stuff (who can relate?!).

I’ve made mistakes at work. I’ve been a bad friend. I’ve done a lot of things that just weren’t up to par. I’m actually not as good of a guy than I gave myself credit for.

But, maybe that’s what leads to the laughing. Maybe this is just it; maybe I’m going through the wringer to get humbled and get a fresh beginning on this post-college life. Maybe this is exactly what it feels like to know how much I need Grace, and to be at my wits’ end regarding my own abilities to accomplish anything Good. And maybe there’s that joy that… heck. Crater or no crater, I’m loved. I’m not that big of a deal, and that’s not that big of a deal.

I know I need God. Dang. That’s the one thing that echoes through my mind every morning. I can’t make it through the day without your Grace, Jesus. I don’t care about anything else.

A verse, ever-quoted through this blog, is James 1:2–5. The words stumble through my lips by losers and failures like me, making them all the more powerful.

2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

So maybe it’s going to be okay. I’m still growing. I’m still learning to depend on Jesus.

I’m gonna go find myself a hat.

It was a really bad idea.

But I think I finally realized what Psalm 63 means:

God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Running in the sun with the heat unbearably invading every pore, I think I’m viscerally experiencing what it’s like to seek to crave the shade, to be inexorably drawn to it, to seek shelter. It’s quite something to have nothing on your mind but the thought of water, to feel your body on the verge of crumbling until you can get yourself to a fountain and drink deeply and unashamedly.

I experienced today what it meant to know and thirst and crave the living God that much as if life itself depended on it. That’s how I want to live.

I think Grace is jackhammering into my creaky l'il religious heart right now. A simple word from Romans is tearing me apart like it hasn't before.

8 “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); 9 because, 

if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and

believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,

you will be saved.

10 For with the heart one believes and is justified,

and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.”

12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek;

for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him.

13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Romans 10:8-13

And the crux of the matter is that Jesus' grace is freely accessible, demonstrating his love for us ("while we were sinners Christ died for us"). I don't earn it. I simply believe. It's been done, already, for two-thousand years. It's not my initiative, it's his.

I've been oblivious--comatose, maybe--to this scandalous truth. I'm still out there chasing my own reality, trying to shape my future with my own two hands. Though exhilirating, it's getting tiring.

And here's the Grace and glory of it all: I am simply his son. Nothing to prove. Adopted into the family, commissioned with a call. Nobody to compare myself against; nothing to brag about. To know that I am in Christ is enough to redirect my ambition, calm my nervous anxieties and free me to run.

My heart's still creaky and old, but there are signs of life.

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(This I know: to find true life, I must lose it to You.)

I don’t want to forget Africa. I can’t. I need to remember, I need to remember the simplicity of living. The endless skies. Friends to chill with when you come home to. Sarah living a couple hundred feet away. Waking up with a vibrant passion and singular purpose.

Here, things are different. If life in Africa was a comfortable stroll, life in the States is doing 90MPH on the freeway. I suppose I’m having lane-merge problems.

So it’s time to do taxes. And it’s time to start work. And don’t forget to take care of the yard. Oh, friends aren’t as accessible as they once were. And I still haven’t put roots down in a church community. And your family’s spread out across a couple of continents.

I feel like my mind and my heart are scattered over a million different people and places, and it’s frustrating. I need to focus. I need to hear. In many ways, I still haven’t felt like I’ve come back home–I’m somewhere between departing and arriving.

I have never felt so small, standing under the African sky. I wish you could be here to see it; sprawling diamonds falling out of the Milky Way, meteors arcing overhead over staccato lightning beats. Bolts. This moment feels like a memory, déjà vu reversed again. Tomorrow, I will wake early and have coffee. Tonight, I cut circles in the sand as thunder sends me to a heavy sleep.