Snailbites

Sometimes in life, there’s moments when you can get overwhelemed. No matter how good you are, how great things are going, or how planned out you have it, sometimes it just comes outta nowhere. Sunny days can turn to cloudy days real fast. Sometimes its not overwhelming, sometimes its underwhelming. Life has its wierd twists and turns like that.

Yesterday I found myself asking God to bring some kind of clarity to the last few years of my life. When all the drama broke in CFC I felt my heart break along with it. And I heard myself saying a prayer (along with many others), that went something along the lines of, Lord please don’t let the last few years be a waste. In more or less words, please don’t tell me I wased 4 years of my life, right after college, as a Full Time Worker. Crazy that you can think that right? After sacrificing so much, and going through such an incredible journey as a missionary, all sorts of crazy things pop into your head when stuff like this happens.

People are dumb. People don’t listen. People don’t love. People misunderstand one another. People are selfish. People make decisions for the wrong reasons. People are power seeking.

But people are human. People are not God. God is God. And we are not.

Sometimes we gotta take a step back and see that we’re only human here. That we’re only acting in the best capacity we know how – and that is to be human. God made us to be human, with all our imperfections, our selfishness, our stupidness… and that’s exactly the way God wants us. God in fact, loves us that way.

Life is hard. Life is full of trials. Each person has their own set of memories – good times, bad times, joys, hurts – all wrapped up in their own little mind. Trials come and trials go, replaced daily by more trials. But isn’t that what life is all about? Answer the challenge to conquer those trials. Something that is innate in the human spirit is that of survival, and the will to succeed in the face of adversity.

Ironic that this category is called God glasses. This was something I used to tell my youth to do all the time, especially when they were having relationship troubles. To see things through God’s eyes. The other night I realized that maybe I should put them on in my own life, and see that I didn’t waste my time here. That I’ve said alot of good things to lot of good people. And I made a difference in people’s lives. Good people. Good kids. And that is worth all the difference.

I think this is what hope is all about. Putting on the God glasses. Because as a human, at any one moment, you can only see one part of this gigantic puzzle we call life. And this lack of clarity causes us to jump and overreact and make uninformed decisions.

But God sees the whole picture. God, in fact, made the picture. And if we could just see what He sees, if we could just wrap our finite little minds around his infinite plan, if only for one, brief, fleeting instant…

…we would hope.

And we would hope. And we would love. And everything would be ok. And my problems wouldn’t be problems because God has a plan for that. And I know its stupid to think ‘this’ because in the long run God solves that problem. And what’s drama except a lesson that we haven’t learned yet.

I know that my life is not a waste because I am still desperately seeking God. And I know that this community will be ok because there are others who are also. There are others who are so pure of heart and intention, that there is no way but God’s way working through them.

Friends, there is hope. Put on your God glasses.

I live in New Jersey. Suburban New Jersey. The kind of place you think of when someone says the word suburbs. Or the kind of place a foreigner would think of when someone says the word America.

I live in a town called Maplewood. Just south of Newark, south enough to not be ghetto, but just east enough to be slightly gritty and away from the prissiness, and close enough to NYC to not be boring. My town is a strange conglomorate of races and ages. If Newark is full of “minorities“, and the Oranges and Livingston are full of “majorities“, then Maplewood is the penultimate mixing bowl of mixing bowls. Your likely to have good friends, best friends of all different races. Growing up I hung out with 4 guys – 1 black, 1 Italian, 1 hispanic, 1 Irish, and me the Filipino.

Maplewood has 4th of July celebrations complete with circus, pie eating contest, and fireworks. One year I got a bronze medal in a relay race. Maplewood has an ivy covered bridge over a babbling brook, complete with wood ducks, that runs past the Library. There is a pizzaria called The Roman Gourmet that has the best pizza in New Jersey. It was opened in the 70s by an Italian famiy who moved here from Brooklyn after emigrating from Italy. Maplewood is also the stomping grounds of a singer named Lauryn Hill, an actor named Zach Braff, and an army guy named General Norman Schwarzkopf.

Maplewood has its own movie theatre, supermarket, liquor store, ice cream shop and book store. It’s got everything all in one small, walkable, family friendly package. There’s no reason to ever leave it. My brother put it best when he said, “How could you ever leave this place?”

New Jersey is, and will always be, home. I strongly believe that someday, all of our friends who moved away will come back to settle down. One day, when we’re all married and our kids are grown, we’re gonna be taking them to gigantic Meat Day celebrations. And they’ll be asking us what are the origins of Mexican Ball? I want my 40th birthday to be in South Mountain reservation with all our kids, chili, burgers, and an eletrical hookup for Powerstone 2. By that time, I assume we’ll be so big that we’ll run that place over.

These past 2 weekends, I’ve been able to spend some good time with some very important people in my life, some since birth. Some are married, some are pregnant, some are just graduating college. And all of us (or most of us at least) are still here. Maybe I don’t have that big of an extended family here in the US, but it’s a great feeling to know that those who I grew up with, I’m still growing up with.

So here’s to New Jersey, to Maplewood, and to EDK. This New Year’s — Mexican Ball in my basement!