My definition of a life well lived has changed significantly from fourteen to forty-four. When I was fourteen my “big sister” cousin Denise introduced me to the music of Jimmy Buffett. The next four years of my life were spent dreaming of sailboats and tropical islands in far off exotic lands. The music of Jimmy Buffett led me to his writings, which in turn led me to Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea), Twain (specifically his travelogue Following the Equator), and my eventual favorite Don’t Stop the Carnival by Herman Wouk. Don’t Stop the Carnival tells the story of Norman Paperman, a boring, normal, “every man” vacationing on the fictional island of Amerigo, when he decides to abandon his same old same old life and buy the hotel he is staying in, moving to the island permanently. Growing up in Pulaski, Tennessee, a town that was the stereotype of same old same old, I ached for adventure and associated with Mr. Paperman.
Being sixteen and still several years from a possible emancipation, I settled for writing my own story, and began my first, and still as yet unfinished, novel Seashores or Summer School. The plot was a little “on the nose” as it tells the story of a small town boy graduating high school, loading up his jeep with a few essentials and his dog and taking off for New Orleans, the Gulf Coast, and ultimately Caribbean islands. For the next few years, I lived a life of adventure vicariously via the title character Dean Colbin, whose name was an amalgamation of my best friend Jode Holden, who was from the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain, twenty-five miles outside of New Orleans, and Holden Caulfield, the naive, immature, and frustrated wanderer from Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.
During this era of my life, I convinced my parents to let me paint a two wall mural of a tropical island on my bedroom wall. My Uncle Ricky and Aunt Jean painted sets for a local playhouse and accepted the task of transforming a Tennessee teen’s bedroom into a tropical paradise. My life was mapped out in my mind and all I had to do was wait to make my escape. I’ve since learned the quote, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.” I’ve also learned the verse, “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes” (James 4:13-16).
Late night winter dreams can really distort your view of reality. If I had it all to do over again I would have spent that time in the living room with my parents, talking to them, learning from them, and listening to their perspectives on life. Little did I know that I would soon walk the path of a young, married, teenage parent. I wouldn’t be a trail blazer, for in my family, this path was already well worn. My parents were sixteen and seventeen when they married and had me. My grandparents were eighteen when they began their family and Jade and I would be nineteen when our began. Instead of drifting from port to port writing about my adventures, I was working third shift in a factory warehouse by night and learning to mix formula and change diapers by day. At the time I was oblivious to the fact that God was at work, forging a path of His own choosing, and inviting me to follow Him. Fast forward a few years and my mindset had changed from “you can go your own way” to “where He leads I’ll follow.” I would, in fact, leave Pulaski for the big city, moving my family to Memphis where I would study to be a preacher. Although my focus in life was becoming clearer, the naiveté of my youth was still very much producing delusional daydreams.
My definition of meaningful ministry has changed from twenty-four to forty-four. At twenty-four I wanted to be the apostle Paul and change the world. My perception of effective ministry involved a big church, being widely known and in high demand. At forty-four, I’ve learned it’s best to glorify Him, not self. At forty-four I’ve learned it’s better to help others rise to their potential, rather than being lifted up yourself. At forty-four my ambition is to live a quiet and peaceful life with a family of believers, loving, serving, and sharing together so as to be a light for those who are lost in the darkness (1 Thessalonians 4:11). My life is not the one that fourteen, or twenty-four year old was seeking, but it is precisely the life this forty-four year old needed and loves. To quote Jimmy Buffett,
“The days drift by
They don't have names
And none of the streets here look the same
And there are so many quiet places
And smilin' eyes match the smilin' faces.
And I have found me a home
Yes, I have found me a home
And you can have the rest of everything I own
'Cause I have found me a home.”
One of my favorite songs at present begins with a brief poem, “Maybe I’m not here to be a superstar after all. Maybe I’m here to pray for all of those who have lost hope along the way.” I’m pretty sure someone was praying for me when I lost hope in ever making my dreams a reality, because somewhere along the way I learned the way of the Christ, and that way is not a yellow brick road with a mansion, robe, and crown waiting at the end, but a dirt road, uphill, that leads to a cross. Make no mistake, the mansion, robe, and crown are real, and waiting once we “finish our course,” but only for those willing to walk the path of the Son of Man. The One who has no place to lay His head, who girds Himself with a towel to wash feet, and who feels the sting of the crown of thorns.
If I had my life to live over, I would spend more time with my parents and grandparents listening to their wisdom about being a young parent and spouse, rather than dreaming of adventures. If I had my early years of ministry to do over, I would spend more time with my spiritual ancestors, those earliest disciples of Jesus who knew that faithfulness and significance have little to do with numbers, names, and notoriety. Unlike their Jewish and Pagans counterparts, with their temples and altars as sacred spaces for meeting with and worshipping their God(s), those first disciples of Jesus were the sacred space. God had come to dwell in them, and they were invited to abide in Him as well (John 15:4). They didn’t have temples, or altars, or houses of worship because they were His temple (1 Corinthians 3;16). Their hearts were the altar upon which selfish ambitions and desires were sacrificed daily (Luke 9:23). For the first century believer, their very lives were their worship (Colossians 3:23). They forgave their enemies as an offering to God (Ephesians 4:32). They spoke words of grace and not bitterness, to and about one another, as humbly and sacredly as if they were speaking to God in prayer (Colossians 4:2-6). They rejoiced in their suffering for His name as a song of praise (Acts 5:41). They invited the hungry, the stranger, the orphan, the widow to their homes and tables in an expression of compassionate communion with the socially poor, knowing they had a shared fellowship in spiritual poverty, if not material. They listened attentively to the grief and struggles of others as if they were listening to the voice of God Himself. They did not cease to participate in the “acts” of corporate worship, but it was the joint expression of their worship, not the totality of it. These actions and attitudes were attended to with the utmost reverence, as if they were sacred rites, because they were. “For as much as you’ve done this to the least of these, you’ve done it unto me” (Matthew 25)
The path God put me on is not the course I’d charted for myself, but it certainly has been an adventurous one. At present, my passport has stamps from a dozen different countries. I finally got to spend time sleeping in a hammock in a grass hut in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, not making up my own story to tell, but telling the story of Jesus to the Kuna Indians. Someday I’ll tell you of my trip to meet an indigenous church in the middle of a plantain plantation in Nicaragua, the twenty-four hours I had to spend in hiding for my own safety in Honduras, or the Bible studies I’ve conducted in El Salvador with soldiers holding machine guns across their laps.
This morning I needed to be reminded that, like Joseph in Egypt, Esther in Persia, and countless other characters in the greatest book ever written, God is preparing the path for His people presently. This path may not look like what we wanted, or expected, but He is with us on this journey. When we get to where we are going we will not be disappointed, so in the meantime we should focus on the journey and not the destination. Our current path isn’t a disease driven detour, but a path of righteousness, and when we reach the end we will find that God was leading us to still waters and greener pastures.
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