Still Cookin'

It's been a couple weeks since I've posted. The university at which I teach runs on a monthly schedule. Students take one class for 12 hours a week. For the next couple months I am teaching both a day class and a night class. Makes doing much of anything else on those days very hard. So, I've lapsed on my blogging. No shortage of ideas. Just time. Always time.

So I sit this morning at my favorite morning place with my computer along for the ride, having a bagel and recovering from the last two days. In the previous 48 hours I have worked 26 of those and when you throw in the commute, that bumps it up to 30. Not complaining or asking for sympathy, just explaining my absence.

Truth is, though, that I've been in a funk for the last couple weeks also. I tend to be optimistic, jovial and full of energy, so I do not like being in a funk. And that just makes it all the worse. Like an emotional toilet flush.

For me it has been a tough couple weeks. When you just want to crawl away and hide that is never good. It's much worse when you are in the middle of several relational systems that you are trying to change and you are aware that your funk is not helping things progress at all...it almost makes you want to give up.

And I think at some point, thanks in part to Larry Crabb (imagine me saying 'Larry' like Jerry Seinfeld says 'Newman'), I think I identified the main source of the funk...I feel so disconnected. I am a people person and I'm in the desert. With good reason and by God's design right now, but that does not change how disconnected I feel.

I also want my life to matter. For God to be able to use me to change lives. That is what I was made to do and what I feel compelled to. The road back is slow, and long, and not at all straight. It's just taking more time that I had hoped. While you might say 'ministry is not limited to vocation', I do understand that and take advantage of the opportunities God's presents, nonetheless it remains true that a huge portion of my week is spent doing things that keep me from what God designed me to do.

Just to heap it on a little more, I like a plan. (Larry Crabb would describe me as a mix of a city builder and fire lighter. I want to be right and I want to be adequate. Thanks Laaaaarrrrryyyy.) Not only do I like a plan, I'd like a timeline and mile markers on the journey. Yet there is none. I don't know what steps to make on my own to achieve marital harmony or vocational ministry. I don't know how much longer I'll be in this holding pattern.

In fact, in some areas I feel life has actually regressed. That adds to my helpless frustration. Maybe regression is faulty perception from being in the middle of everything, or maybe that is just the discomfort of the system changing. I'm not sure. What I am aware of is making my own plan is yet another thing God is breaking me of.

So, not only am I in the desert (I keep wanting to type dessert and being in a big dessert actually sounds good right now) with very little connection so I will focus my connection on God, I am also in the dark so I cannot find my own way and have to trust God; the one who has me here.

It all comes back to trust, nice. Further vindication at the choice of blog name.

There you have it. My funk. It was bad. But I'm coming out of it. Time with God is amazing (unfortunately a funk makes pursuing that time a true battle). God is reminding me that He is doing a new thing. He is the one in charge and new things take time. Not necessarily what someone living in a microwave culture wants to hear. But meat cooked in a croc-pot is way, way, way better than meat cooked in a microwave.