I've considered beginning a new blog for awhile now. I guess I started thinking seriously about writing more when I turned 33-years-old earlier this year and assumed that by this point my life would feel a bit more 'settled' than it does now. Don't get me wrong: I feel settled in my career as I've now completed my first full year with the Christian humanitarian organization World Vision in NYC. I'm settled in my marriage after my husband and I just celebrated our 4th year anniversary in September. I'm settled at home where as an Oklahoman I finally feel completely comfortable navigating the streets of New York. And although we don't have kids yet, I'm settled with the idea that traveling the world and loving my sweet dog, Brinkley, may be exactly what I want most in life. Life should feel settled, right? But for some reason, there's this gnawing sense of restlessness. Okay, I'll admit it....maybe I am a bit unsettled lately.
Age 33 seems significant to me. Although we don't know exactly how old Christ was when he was crucified, biblical scholars have speculated that he too was 33-years-old. He performed 33 miracles during his lifetime and in Dan Brown's 2009 novel "The Lost Symbol", the number 33 was discovered to lead to the essential meaning of life (the Bible). Even some Muslims, according to Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali, believe the dwellers of Heaven will exist eternally in a state of being age 33. Bruce Lee and Alexander the Great died at age 33. And to add a bit more to our random '33' trivia, the human spine has 33 vertebrae and 33 is, according to the Newton scale, the temperature at which water boils.
Yep, I'm at a boiling point. A crossroads, you may call it. I'm not sure where this path leads nor why I have this bizarre sense that I'm at a significant turning point in my own life. Having been raised a Christian and personally having a deep faith in Christ myself, I know (and have preached myself) that we all have a hole in our lives that only He can fill. I asked Christ into my life at age 13 and love Him with all my heart...yet, two decades later my faith has evolved to an unrecognizeable state. I've told people it feels as if I've had my faith thrown into a spiritual washing machine of life where it gets tossed, turned and stretched to a point where you don't what you're about to pull out once you open the machine door. Don't get me wrong: I have an unshakeable faith in Christ. As C.S. Lewis plainly stated, we have 3 options when it comes to Christ. He is either a liar, a lunatic or Lord, as he claimed himself. I believe Jesus wasn't lying nor insane....and have concluded in my heart that Christ was and is who he said he was.
Although I'm like most Christians and have a deep admiration for many 'traditional' biblical heroes...Moses, David, Daniel and Esther....one of my favorite more untraditional heroes is Jacob. Boy, was Jacob screwed up. He was a liar, a cheat and even stole his own brother's birthright. Yet, toward the latter part of his life Jacob wrestled with an angel or a man...some believe whom was God himself. Do you remember the story? Look up Genesis 32. Apparently, the two of them wrestled till daybreak and the angel eventually realized that Jacob wasn't going to give up. "When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man." But get this....Jacob then said he wasn't going to leave until the angel 'blessed' him! Jacob sure was audacious. Yet, the angel not only blessed him but even changed Jacob's name to Israel "because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
It makes me seriously wonder...how many of us are willing....or crazy enough....to attempt to wrestle with God?! I mean...you too would run the risk of walking away with not only a jacked up hip ....but a seriously jacked up life. Wouldn't it make much more sense to simply and dutifully just follow God? Aren't we called to do that as Christians? Wouldn't our lives be much happier, content and simple?
But what if that's not enough?
Hang with me a bit more on this line of thinking...because I don't want you to think for a moment that I'm not seriously committed to Christ. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not content just being a follower. I want to also be a 'friend' of God's. Maybe that's like Jacob...a bit too audacious. But there are a few, not many, characters in the Bible who were considered friends of God. Abraham, for example, was called a friend. And Elijah, his name means Friend of God or Walks with God.
So today, at age 33, I'm not worried about dying or being crucified. However, I believe I am at a strange crossroads in life and in my faith that is no longer content with simplistic answers to life. I want to wrestle with God, I want to figure out how to befriend God, I want to live life fully aware and open to possibilities.
One of my favorite authors is psychotherapist M. Scott Peck who wrote that there are 4 stages in human spiritual development: the chaotic-->the formal --> the skeptic -->the mystic.
Friends, can I tell you.....life and God get more and more mysterious to me the older I get. I've got less figured out, life is unsettled, the washing machine keeps rumbling....and I'm okay with that. Actually, I love it. But at 33-years-old, I think one thing I've figured out for sure is that the next 33 years are going to be quite the adventure. Bottomline, the purpose of this blog is to invite friends/family along on the journey. As they say in Oklahoma, I guess let's just 'tie a knot and hang on!'
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