Dear Mike,
No, it's not Friday. But I felt a real urge to step in today.
I was looking over your shoulder as you started journaling this morning. I saw you write,
'Sometimes I just want to be quiet and wish there was a felt relationship here, and not just writing words and doing work. The thought came to me: If Jesus was sitting here in this living room, what would I say to him? My immediate response is, 'What do you want me to do with this life?!?!'."
And that's where I had to step in. As I read your question, and imagined my son sitting there in your living room, I can very clearly see him chuckling and shaking his head and saying, 'Mike you still don't get it. It's not what I want you to *do* but who I want you to *be*.'
Mike, do you know that in the past thirty-five days you have walked 459,288 steps, a total of 241 miles? That's almost seven miles a day! What are you trying to get away from? Where do you think you're headed to? Will you really know where you are when you get there?
You're walking so incessantly because you've been given a subtle but very direct message your whole life: sitting and doing nothing is time wasted. There is always something that needs to be done, and if you're not doing it, you're not a good person. Some of the reason you walk every day and never take a break is because you know how easy it is to lose a good habit. Some of it is because the sun is shining now and the sky is blue and you know that the weather will turn soon turn cooler and even gray as winter arrives, and you like walking out in the sun.
But the real reason you do this is because there's always that voice inside you that says you can't just sit and do nothing. You got the message from your parents, and you got it in spades from your wife. If they were doing something, then by George you should be doing something, too. Life is not something to be enjoyed but endured. Life is a veil of tears.
Life is just one more chore on the list.
In some ways you even got this message from the church. And over the last few days I've watched you jump from task to task - idea to idea - with no sense of completion or accomplishment, from wanting to learn more about and teach universalism from a Christian perspective, to studying Al-Anon literature to do your 8th and 9th step, to fleshing out a study edition of the AA big book with Bible verses, to writing a sermon series on each of the 12 steps, to pulling together all of your songs and lyrics and poems into one binder, to trying to find a church that preaches Christian universalism and a non-futurist view of Revelation. You even continue to interview even though you've accepted a job! You're convinced that America is in the direst of straits because of a bunch of dimwitted, believe-anything, trigger-happy voters, and you're convinced someone needs to say how all leaders of one party are seeing who can outdo each other to sink to the lowest level of utter contempt that a human can sink to, and are shocked that friends and family can be so blind and dull.
I'm exhausted just watching you.
And my day of rest is still four days away...
Here's the thing: you chastise them for believing lies, but you've bought into one yourself that robs you of the joy with which I intended you to go through this life. Maybe I did create you to accomplish great things. But they are the *result* that comes from your commitment to do nothing except develop the *relationship* with me. To be still and know that I am God.
Even these little prayers you write have become an obligation of sorts - another commitment you've somehow made to ... to .. to whom, exactly? The two or three people who read them? I know, I know - you post a picture or a sentence about Adleigh and you get responses from forty people. But you write a nice, thoughtful, creative, original prayer, and it's ... crickets. (Actually, and I hate to break it to you, but I don't think the crickets are reading them either...)
A lot of your constant action is motivated by guilt, and the things you choose to act on are mostly motivated by fear. You feel guilty for living in America, in all this abundance you're within and how you've never been left wanting of anything. The guilt is doubled and redoubled by your sense of failure and your struggle with alcoholism, and how you tried to enter the ministry but didn't, and how you've been given gifts in so many ways but believe in your heart that they have amounted to zero in your life. For some reason, doing the 8th and 9th step is especially troublesome right now because you're forced to think through and regurgitate again all the things you've done wrong and how you've hurt people. But I'm thinking, This should come quite easily to you because your brain's default cycle is to recycle all your sins and failures and wrongs and undones and missed opportunities over and over and over gain.
Frosty morn.
Blame again those misguided people in misguided churches. Sometimes I wish my name wasn't associated with them.
You ever watched the faces of people singing in most church choirs? A smiling face is as rare there as a compassionate heart is on a GOP ballot. (Look, I'm God, ok? I can mix politics and religion if I need to...). Those choir members are singing, but their minds are elsewhere, sifting through the next to-do's on their endless lists. Just like you.
And to you, and to all of them, I say:
JUST STOP IT!!!
Ahem.
Be still. Cease striving. You are not running this show. Be happy and show some joy on your face! I came into your heart so that living waters could flow out of you, but if you don't make time for your own well to be replenished, it will run dry and you will have nothing to offer the ones who are thirsty.
I wish I could send a dove down from the clouds and let you hear me say what I said to Jesus: "This is my son, and in him I am well pleased." Mike, I would say the same to you. I am pleased to the uttermost with you. I am excited about the rest of your life and what you're going to do.
But I am more excited when I think about our times together and who you can *be*.
Just remember this:
There is a God.
And you're not him.
Amen.
- God
