New Boots and New Perspective
I just returned from my first trip to the Pacific Northwest to visit my best friend. Katie moved to Portland, OR this past November after reading the book by Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts. Well, if you ask her, she’ll tell you that was 70 percent of the reason she moved there. I remember the process of her deciding to move there. There were moments of anxiety and fear as the reality set in that she was actually going to make this move. She wasn’t quite sure how she’d afford a place to live, find a job or learn her way around a new city but deep down she knew she had to go.
Before she was left, Katie was warned by folks who had lived in Portland that, “She’ll (Portland) be hard on you at first.” She quickly learned the truth of that statement but through tears and frustration began to gain the approval of this magnificent city. Over and over again I would hear Katie go on about how she walks everywhere, about how amazing her neighborhood is and that, “it really doesn’t rain here ALL the time.” I know her pretty well and I could hear in her voice that she was falling in love with her new city and that she had no plans of going anywhere for quite some time.
With that in mind, I knew it was time for me to go for a visit. It had been over a year since we’d been able to hang out and we often joked that the whole reason she wanted me to come visit this time was so that I’d fall in love with Portland and eventually move there myself. I love to travel, and it didn’t take much convincing on her part to get me to go visit a place, or even a region of the country, that I had never been.
The intention of this blog is not to give a moment by moment recap of all of the things I did while in Oregon or to show pictures or tell funny stories… instead, it’s to help me process some of things I learned while taking this short trip. I didn’t have any wild expectations or an agenda, honestly, I was just looking forward to spending some time in a new city with an amazing friend.
Whenever I get out of my day to day routine and go someplace I’ve never been I always process where I am in life and where I’m going. I rethink plans and goals and begin to imagine a life different from the life that I’m currently living. I allow myself to play with the idea of not having everything planned out and starting over and doing something completely different. This trip was no different in that respect but seems to have left a little more of an impact than usual. It’s not necessarily any one particular thing that I experienced on the trip that has allowed me to think outside of my current situation but I believe it’s the timing of the trip and how it corresponds with where I am. I’m a few short months away from being debt free which has been an almost 3 year journey to financial freedom. The next step is to build up a fairly large savings for emergencies and from there, who knows. But today, I find myself thinking, “what if I decided to do something different.” Then I start to get that feeling of excitement in the pit of my stomach… the one that occurs when you remember that you can do anything you want to and that you don’t have to always stick to one plan. It comes when I allow myself to ask God, “What’s next?” instead of telling him, “here’s what’s next.”
Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t completely abandoned the course I’ve been on for the last three years and, currently, I’m still on the same track. But what has changed is that I’m remembering that there is more out there than my plan. That God is far bigger than an emergency fund or the right steps to starting a new church. Traveling to the opposite corner of the country has reminded me how big this world is and how much there is to do and how little time there is to do it. It’s helped me to put in perspective working a day job in order to meet a certain goal. It’s helped me to even look at the things I’m doing now with my life with a broader view. I’m starting to see the small group that I lead at my place on Wednesday’s for some of the Decatur city teens as more than just a part of the church that I’m planting. Instead it’s about pouring as much as I can into them so that maybe, just maybe, they will see God in a way that makes sense in their world and will desire to entertain the idea that He exists outside of religion and genuinely loves them. It’s my chance to genuinely love them and to give them what little wisdom I’ve collected over my short adult life.
Things are bigger now. I think part of this realization came as we drove out of a city with towering buildings and intricate bridges through mountains that were lined with moss covered trees and interwoven with creeks and rivers, and then through farmland and rural towns until, as if land just dropped away, we came over a hill and were faced with the vastness of the pacific ocean lined by rocky cliffs and sandy beaches. Upon this view my stomach dropped and I was filled with a kind of adrenaline that is hard to explain. I think it came from the fact that Katie and I had just driven through some of God’s most beautiful creation only to be greeted with an infinite mass of water as if He was saying, “you have no idea what I can do.” You can’t help but feel so incredibly small and yet so incredibly loved upon a sight like this. The fact is, God created beauty in such huge proportions and yet loves me more than any of it and that I am more beautiful to him than any of the scenery that I had just experienced.
Even if I continue on the same track that I was on before I made this trip, I still see things differently now… I see them more in context of the bigger things that God is doing. I see them outside of new jeans, new boots and new travels. Portland is an amazing city surrounded by mountains, farmland, vineyards and if you drive far enough, the Pacific Ocean. But more importantly, Portland to me was a reminder of how big God is and how I’m not ever stuck in any one circumstance. I can only pray now that God will remind me of this freedom daily and that I’ll constantly have my eyes and ears open to all that God has for me and that I’ll never sacrifice a new adventure for an old plan.
I was saying just this afternoon how God always sends exactly what you need. . . and then I found this.