A Personal God Story...

At some point along the way we all have visions of what our lives are going to look like, don’t we? Maybe they’re not quite adventurous enough to be considered our ‘dreams’, per se, but those snapshot expectations of where we will find ourselves a few years down the road; the future moments for which we plan, prepare and educate ourselves, consisting of a palette of job opportunities, geographical preferences and romantic interests. We all have hopes, however firm or vague they may be. We all have some picture of the horizon that we are aiming for in the present. At twenty-eight years old, I am not where I thought I’d be. This place where I find myself is much more complex than the crude drawings of my twenty year-old imagination. It’s a harder place, though more beautiful. It’s more complicated, but more rewarding. It isn’t exactly the future I had once hoped for, but I wouldn’t change it now. I suppose, though, all this is to be expected when you invite someone like God to take the wheel of your life. I still remember that moment.

It’s always hard to look at a period of your own life in retrospect and admit that, despite your own best efforts at the time, your were basically a miserable person. There’s a degree of self-knowledge and disclosure in that sort of statement that most of us would much rather just avoid, myself included. But as I think about my sophomore and junior years of college, I can’t help but concede the truth: I was miserable. It would even make for a better story if I could tell you that my misery was of the sort imposed by outside circumstances, but it wasn’t. Mine was a self-imposed, self-inflicted variety of misery and, as such, I was blind to it for a long time. I was functional enough; near the top of my class and a leader in my church and Christian fellowship. I was friendly enough; those people that I chose to open myself to became a large enough circle of friends to satisfy my reasonable social needs. But in the midst of all the activity and life going on around me, my heart was drying up. I was the center of my own universe, and the gravity was beginning to take its toll. It took a long time before I began to recognize that what trapped me in misery was the death-grip with which I was holding on to my dreams.

I had a vision of the future and, as vague as it may have been, I clung to it. There were the thoughts of a career path that would have been comfortable and personally satisfying. There was a girl who I wanted to marry. But the doors to that career never seemed to open fully, the girl couldn’t seem to convince herself to feel the same, and the tighter I clung, the more these things seemed to move out of reach. With all the will I could muster, I longed for my vision of the future to come to pass. My frustrations turned that will inward, and I began to shrink. And God? As far as I was concerned, I was glad to have God along for the ride, but as long as he failed to help me achieve my goals, I wasn’t sure what good it did me. As it turns out, God is a pretty crappy co-pilot.

Then, one day, through some eventual combination of compiled frustration, exhaustion and disappointment, I remember coming to the end of myself. It wasn’t an extraordinary day, and the disappointments therein were not in any way new, but my self-orbiting universe just imploded. I finally looked down at the white-knuckled fists that were clinging to my hopes and dreams, my visions of the future, and I realized that I was squeezing the life out of everything that I loved, and everything I was clinging to. It was February in Rhode Island, and in an abandoned lifeguard stand overlooking Narragansett Bay, I came face to face with my own misery. And in that moment, I heard the voice of God. It wasn’t audible, per se, so much as a moment of inescapable conviction, but the word was clear; “Open your hands.” So I did.

It was there in that moment that I understood for perhaps the first time that God could never be a mere companion on my journey; He was the orchestrator, the pilot and the guide. It could never be a matter of taking the plans of my self-centered universe to him for his token blessing; it was about His plans, His will, His centrality. I understood for the first time that I could not accept and cling to the gifts God had poured out on me, only to ignore His calling and His purposes in my life. Those gifts, and my hopes, had become my god, and they simply couldn’t carry the weight. So I opened my hands. I released my hold on my future. I held out all that I was, all that I had, and all that I would be, on open hands before God and said, “Take it. Take me. Do with me as you please. Send me wherever you will, because I can’t drive this thing, my life, anymore. It’s yours.”

Suffice it to say that I am not where I once thought I would be. But it’s better. It’s fuller. It’s more truly alive. Because, through my frustration one February day those years ago, Jesus saved me from myself, and for that I am forever grateful.