Finding Momentum

I’ve started to take breaks more often in the after­noons. I’ll walk down Howard and up 1st to a lit­tle court­yard that I’ve found and just jour­nal and think and watch traf­fic pass on by.

These days with the weather get­ting warmer, a walk out in the city is just what I need to recen­ter and relax. And get some good time in with Jesus too.

One point of fric­tion between myself and Sarah is that we have a really, really hard time com­mu­ni­cat­ing. I mean, it doesn’t help that women are elab­o­rate enig­mas, and as men we are Aston­ish­ingly Dense. Gen­tle­men, tell me if you’ve ever heard the fol­low­ing from your ladies:

You just don’t get me.

I wanted you to lis­ten and feel with me.

Stop giv­ing me solu­tions and just lis­ten to me.

Why are you so quiet?

No, that’s not what I meant.

Are you lis­ten­ing to me?

I want you to want to.

I don’t have to tell you; you should just know it already.

WELL,

Sarah just gave me the Best Valentine’s Gift Ever:

It’s basi­cally like get­ting the other team’s play­book. Every­body wins, so it’s even better.

Sarah made me an instruc­tion man­ual for Valentine’s Day. No, seri­ously. It’s a cute hand­crafted book with lit­tle snip­pets of lists of her likes and dis­likes, her basic info, and most of all, this men­tal model and deci­sion dia­gram of the female brain (well, hers at least).

My log­i­cal, ratio­nal, Engi­neer mind rejoices. I love this girl.

In the midst of the crazi­ness of I’m real­iz­ing that I need bet­ter bound­aries. Do I really want to be that dad that doesn’t know his kids because he’s pulling late hours at the office?

At the same time, it’s kind of fun stay­ing late with cowork­ers, shar­ing in the pain! Ah, yes, it’s every sin­gle EECS class I ever had, all over again. Fun, but only for the first cou­ple of evenings.

I have to remem­ber I’m human and lim­ited. God’s sov­er­eign and the work is going to get done with or with­out me. And God for­bid if I am ever con­trolled by work or stress or dead­lines. It’s just not worth it. Shake it off. Take a deep breath, Andrew. It’s gonna be okay.

Life is pretty nuts right now. But God’s still good, and with that I’m at peace.

This week at Urbana was what I needed. I think I heard what I needed to hear: echoes of the King­dom told through busi­ness­peo­ple who under­stand that with regards to their busi­nesses, “it’s not about the money, but all about rela­tion­ships.” It’s about being con­sci­en­tious to how you can use busi­ness to advance the King­dom and change lives: cre­at­ing jobs, being eth­i­cal, open­ing doors.

I’ve been need­ing some sort of spir­i­tual kick in the pants, and I think I finally feel that there’s a door open­ing with regards to my future. Com­ing here and get­ting excited about using my skills and pas­sion about soft­ware, design, pro­gram­ming, peo­ple… man. I think this is help­ing me focus where I need to be going and grow­ing. Men­tor­ship, dis­ci­ple­ship, prac­ti­cal real-world busi­ness skills, prayer…

Tom Hsieh is an Asian-American tech entre­pre­neur whose story tells that story well. Years ago Tom went to Urbana and came away with two convictions:

1. God’s heart was for the urban poor.
2. Tom did not love the poor.

Some­thing needed to hap­pen, so Tom decided to move into the inner city after grad­u­a­tion, turn­ing down sev­eral lucra­tive offers and serv­ing with a local church there. He took a part-time com­puter tech job with flex­i­ble hours so he could do his ser­vice there.

Tom was suc­cess­ful in what he did and his career advanced. Soon he found him­self an exec­u­tive at Earth­link (in its nascent startup days), where he told us sto­ries about sim­ply being obe­di­ent to Jesus in the work­place, liv­ing a sim­ple life in the grind of cor­po­rate Amer­ica, liv­ing a life of rad­i­cal giving. Tom and his wife have com­mit­ted to live at or below the median income level, so that means they give away about 80% of their income. Crazy.

Tom was clos­ing a busi­ness deal over a power lunch one day: “This isn’t real!” he thought to him­self while bring­ing the slice steak up to his mouth. Hang­ing out with the neigh­bor­hood kids and see­ing their smiles? That’s real. Being spir­i­tu­ally authen­tic and Hope­ful in a world that denies it? That’s real.  Choos­ing to fight greed with gen­eros­ity? That’s real.

Hear­ing sto­ries like these this week was good for my soul. More specif­i­cally, I think I have some sort of call­ing to live a focused, mis­sional life. Here. Or over­seas. Who knows, and where a few years ago that was some­thing I felt I had to fight, this time around it’s some­thing that’s freeing.

Who knows, who knows. It’s the start of a new year. New pos­si­bil­i­ties. We’ll see.

I’ve got my bags packed and wait­ing in an air­port in Kansas City en route to Urbana.

I was think­ing today about how much I’m seek­ing a call­ing (or a life direc­tion, you could say). Life in the work­ing world has its way of suck­ing you onto its tread­mill, where it’s easy to sim­ply wake up one day, and a year has passed, and you’re still sport­ing the same haircut.

But I was think­ing today that really, this is less about direc­tion than it is about iden­tity. I’m known less by my pro­fes­sional aspi­ra­tions, my friend­ships, the per­son I was in col­lege, my per­for­mance as a worker in the mar­ket­place than I am sim­ply God’s son.

I need some sort of kick start, some­thing to make that real­iza­tion hit home.

Five fiery oaks
    burst into light

The scent of pine
    released from autumn’s sleep

Justin hands me a photo a few weeks ago. Can you get this blown up? Mike wants it.

I go see Mike. What do you want it to say?

He thinks.

“Rest in peace, God­fa­ther. From your brother, Spicy Mike.”