Friday, July 11, 2008

Uhaul trailers and Cheap Hotel Rooms

Moving is one of the most stressful things a person could ever experience. To start off, it seems like the trailer is big enough... it's never big enough, even when you only own a tiny dorm size tv, a single bed, and a futon. Then there is the craziness of actually driving the million hours to get across the country.
And the amazing thing about moving to the rocky mountains are the innumerable fields of corn it takes until you actually see a mountain. For a while you imagine them in the distance. I think that envisioning mountains is the prairie's version of desert mirages. Eventually the corn and soy beans have to end, and eventually they do, it just takes nearly a thousand miles to get to them.
Yet, after the miles of corn, the mountains have risen, and I am finally here. Not quite in my new home, but not in a cheap hotel either. I'll be there tomorrow. Sleeping in my own bed, after it is assembled, and decorating my own walls, even though they will be oddly foreign.
Soon I'll be starting my new job, yet a job is such a poor description of what ministry is. Vocation may describe it more clearly. It's a calling, a lifestyle, a passion, a burden, a joy, and a number of other things all at once. The overwhelming amount of what the days, weeks, months, and potentially years ahead hold for me, weighs on me from time to time.
I've read the books. "Your first two years of youth ministry" sits on my book shelf. Doug Fields did a great job, I have no doubt about that, but reading about your first two years, and living your first two years, are two completely different things. Not to mention, the kids of the Rocky mountains, though very similar, are still different from the midwest version of kids I have learned on. But for as different as they are, they are still teenagers, whom I love and care for more than the very breath I breathe, and that has to outweigh a lot of insecurity.
Not to mention, beyond my love and care, there is a God who is far more capable of loving and caring for those students. The same God who called me to make the journey to come here, will have to be the same God I depend on in the days ahead, and the same God who will carry those students when I can't. That has to be enough for now.

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