Finding Momentum

It’s a strange life, this is. I’m stand­ing at the Cal­train sta­tion, watch­ing the 195 leave me behind in the dust, watch­ing a long, slow whis­tle escape from the engine train and sur­round me with its delight­ful irony. Tonight I’ll get home an hour later, maybe by 1AM if I’m lucky.

I wob­ble off my bike, sweaty and more than a lit­tle frus­trated, and stum­ble over to the near­est bench. There’s nobody to curse but steel, diesel, and a heart­less timetable. I kick a cock­roach; it rolls over and scur­ries away. Hrmph. Still grumpy. Okay, I’ll vent on Twit­ter. Bad idea Andrew, broad­cast­ing angst over the Inter­net is a cul­tural faux pas (but look at what you’re read­ing, ha!).

Life is just really dif­fer­ent. I just real­ized why–it’s become much harder to attach mean­ing to things any­more. I wake up, I catch the J bus, I walk into work, I fix bugs, draw mock­ups, code fea­tures, grab lunch, take a run, catch the bus, go home, watch a movie… and do it all over again. Life’s more rou­tine. My iden­tity sud­denly doesn’t feel as much a small-group leader, or a men­tor, or a stu­dent, or a friend, or a musi­cian any more as it is mostly now as a… what?

–

It’s a warm sum­mer evening here at the Cal­train sta­tion. I sit here for an hour and take in the rhodo­den­dron breeze. Forced to stay, and sit, and watch, and be.

A blind man slowly teeters up to the fare booth and orders a ticket. “WELCOME TO CALTRAIN!” the lady with the dig­i­tal voice blares, and the blind man, star­tled, silences her with the pow­ers of Braille. A cock­roach scur­ries under­foot and heads for the light.

I close my eyes and lis­ten to the rhythms of the city: the groan­ings of the train tracks, the soft rush of traf­fic, peo­ple con­vers­ing faintly just over the other side.

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.

So I’m cut­ting my hair on Sunday–no big deal, right? I’ve been cut­ting my hair for the past eleven years (one mir­ror, one trim­mer and nerves of steel) to vary­ing degrees of suc­cess. Well… my stan­dard of suc­cess means that after my hair­cut, I should a) still be rec­og­niz­able as me and b) not elicit laugh­ter (a com­pli­ment here and there wouldn’t be bad, either!).

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.

I was out today on a long run (I’m pick­ing up train­ing for the SF Half Marathon in late July). But it was hot… the ther­mo­stat was read­ing 90 degrees at 10 in the morning.

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.

Man. Where to even start?

I started work­ing at Riverbed about three months ago. Three months! Time does fly.

What do you do? I’m a User Inter­face Devel­oper with them, where I design the man­age­ment inter­face to the Steel­head, their WAN accel­er­a­tion prod­uct. What this means in plain Eng­lish is that I design the look and feel of the con­trol panel to their prod­uct, a net­work device that speeds up data trans­fer over a network.

No, it’s not the sex­i­est thing to be doing, but hey it’s my first full-time job. My boss is really cool and my cowork­ers are really fun. I think I’m gonna learn a lot here.

I remem­ber start­ing work and mak­ing a list of priorities:

1. Rela­tion­ships > work.
2. Per­sonal life > work life (and learn how to sep­a­rate the two)
3. Work hard & work well.
4. Work to be generous.
5. Work as an act of worship.

Here’s what I’m learning:

1. The rhythm of work life is like noth­ing I antic­i­pated. It wasn’t that total screech­ing halt that I braced myself for, but rather a slower, grad­ual fade into a 9A-6P rhythm. It’s not pulling crazy demands on my per­sonal life right now, but I def­i­nitely under­stand that desire to come in after work, sit down and veg out in front of the TV.
2. It’s all about the rela­tion­ships, and that’s not easy. If I’m going to be spend­ing most of my life here at work, I really want to make it count. You know? I want these rela­tion­ships to really mean some­thing. Call me naive, but I think we can make real friends at work. And that requires a lot of effort.

   I’m dis­cov­er­ing that this effort doesn’t come easy. Because work life has greatly shrunk the scope of my out­side activ­i­ties, it means that there needs to be real effort to make room to chill with cowork­ers over a pitcher at the bar across the street, or attend my coworker’s daughter’s high school musi­cal (haven’t done that one yet!). And I’m find­ing that often­times it’s far eas­ier to block out my whole sched­ule with things I plan but never leave room for the sim­ple con­ver­sa­tions that come my way every day.

3. I thought that mak­ing money wasn’t going to make me mate­ri­al­is­tic (that’s quite a mouth­ful). I thought I knew how to live gen­er­ously and it would come easy. After all, I came from col­lege, right? I lived off food scraps and hor­ri­bly impro­vised recipes/abominations (see: spaghetti sauce sand­wich). I went to Inter­var­sity, right? I know what it’s like to inter­face with the poor.

   It’s not easy, guys.

   I’m find­ing it’s true that the more you make, the more you com­pare to those who have more. Oh, I make x dol­lars a year? Well my coworker makes y more than me, and he’s only z quan­tity more/less expe­ri­enced. And it’s true, when you never thought money would be an idol, you find your­self wish­ing that you had extra space in your wal­let for that extra purchase.

4. I’m learn­ing that the act of work itself is, well, wor­ship. I’m think­ing that sat­is­fac­tion you get when you fin­ish a big project hav­ing put your heart and mind and strength into it is, well, a reflec­tion of how God felt when he fin­ished us up on the 7th metaphor­i­cal (or lit­eral, depend­ing on your take) day.
5. I also thought that giv­ing would be more glam­orous than it really was. I’m not quite sure what I imag­ined. Maybe lav­ish praise from friends and acquain­tances. “Oh, he’s so kind.” “Oh, he’s a gen­er­ous fel­low (which nobody can deny)” At the very least, maybe a gold star in the books.

Maybe it’s true, what Jesus taught: “But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” (Matt. 6:3). That’s the ulti­mate suck-it-up unglam­orous thing to do. That’s zero recog­ni­tion, not even from your­self. I think Jesus had a point when he said that. Don’t look to the act of giv­ing to give you your full sat­is­fac­tion. Do it because your Father loves you; his Holy Spirit moves and breathes through you.

And so it is with the work­place as well; I’m learn­ing not to see it as my ulti­mate ends of sat­is­fac­tion. I’m try­ing hard not to let it dic­tate my mood for the day or my pace of life in gen­eral. I’m work­ing out what it means to have a career, to have skills, tal­ents, pas­sions, and to explore and expand them in the con­text of this new rhythm of life.

I think I make this tran­si­tion out to be a lot harder than it actu­ally is. I need to remem­ber that I do these things because the Spirit moves and breathes through me. And in light of that, I can chill.

Since I’ve been here last, things have changed. I grad­u­ated from col­lege, went to Africa, started work­ing in the City, changed churches, moved homes. In the span of one week, I’m in San Fran­cisco, then Emeryville, then Saratoga, then Oak­land and back. I’ve said good­bye to friends, made new ones, and redis­cov­ered old ones.

I gotta be hon­est, I’ve never felt so lost in my life.

But this is a good place. This is a dif­fer­ent place. I’m going to be sit­ting down and writ­ing more from here on out. It’s my way of keep­ing track of myself and mak­ing sure I’m still here.

This is day one. I am going to start by going to bed.

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.

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