Waiting at a red light

Jonny Lang - Red Light

You sing a song
While sitting at a red light
You think of home
While sitting at a red light
Too slow to roll
Put your life on hold
An open path
With nowhere to go
You start to wonder
While sitting at a red light
You can run a red light
Give up at a red light
You break the mold
When running through the tolls
Speeding through your whole life
A chance to breathe
While sitting at a red light
You look around
Reflecting on your life
A chance to think
Am I drinking too much
Should I keep going
Lose the life that I love
A second glance
When coming to a red light

As I am a big fan of the "Just go" mentality and way of faith, I can't help but notice that God often has to put on the brakes when I try and speed ahead of His plan for me.

Did I mention I'm impatient? My best friend can attest to this. One of the biggest superficial challenges we come up against in our friendship is our differing views of time and/or time management. While I am most definitely a huge procrastinator and lover of the last minute, I get things done, for the most part on time. I hate being late, and try my hardest (with usual success) to honor time commitments. At the same time I don't like to schedule things too far in advance because I want to keep myself available for last minute changes... I'm full of contradictions, I know this. My friend on the other hand is quite the opposite, and it causes me more strife than it causes her. I'm honestly little bias but we love each other and we work around our time management views (most of the time). But back to the whole lack of patience thing...

Every city or town has that one intersection... you know, the one that always seems to turn red when you near it? And the traffic gods have decided that your car would be the unlucky one to sit all by it's lonesome and endure the endless minutes until you have paid penance for running the yellow the past 10 times you've hit that intersection or perhaps it's payment for not quite stopping at the last stop sign. It's inevitable that Murphy's Law and Karma have their role in the intersection, and your friends have even admitted to the strange coincidence of the light and their driving transgressions. Ok, so maybe you don't have one of those intersections, and maybe you're thinking I'm trying too hard on this illustration... but I promise you, if you're ever in Daly City, CA there's an intersection on John Daly Blvd. that I'm making these statements upon. Ok, I'll get on with it (as you can tell I'm having difficulty staying focused)!

Since I won't have a job when I get back to the Bay Area in August, I'm starting the preliminary browsing of job search engines (idealist, craigslist, and a few ministry focused engines). This process is both exciting and exhausting. Hours of reading job positions, organization's websites, reviews, requirements, doctrinal statements and the like. This process is causing quite a bit of mental anxiety. Questions come up, "Will I be able to find a job I love? Will I be qualified? Will I make enough money in this job, to live in my apartment? Will I have to move?" The list of questions continues. As anxious as I get, I keep testing the job outlook waters. Here is the problem... the jobs that I really want to look into cause the most anxiety! Not the good type of anxiety, but the type that causes me to doubt my abilities, my passions, and ultimately my confidence that God has it under control.

Then it hit me, this morning, maybe I need to have a bit of healing in my life before God can hand me the responsibility of doing what I love to do... cultivating relationships, encouraging others, coming alongside people and loving them the way I think Jesus would have wanted me to. I'm a little aggravated that God allows this anxiety to come over me when I think about these things, but I need to let my present relational wounds heal and past emotional scar tissue be broken down again. As with all things, I'm just ready to move on and God's telling me to slow down and wait for a bit. So now I'm stuck at this red light that has no one else around and the only thing keeping me there is sense that God is asking me. No one will catch me if I run through it, but I'll probably feel guilty about it later. So for now I will sit at my red light and consider it as some down time to regain my confidence in God and myself.

say what you need to say

Say by John Mayer

Take all of your wasted honor.
Every little past frustration.
Take all of your so called problems,
Better put 'em in quotations.
Say what you need to say (x8)
Walkin' like a one man army,
Fightin' with the shadows in your head.
Livin' up the same old moment
Knowin' you'd be better off instead
If you could only...Say what you need to say (x8)
Have no fear for givin' in.
Have no fear for giving over
You better know that in the end
It's better to say too much,
than never to say what you need to say again
.Even if your hands are shaking,And your faith is broken.
Even as the eyes are closin',
Do it with a heart wide open.(Wide Heart)
Say what you need to...Say what you need to say.

Somewhere along the line we're told or we learn by example that talking about what's going on in our lives or speaking up for a friend or loved or even for ourselves, is a bad idea. It brings up that big "V" word... vulnerability. Suddenly, by saying something, we open ourselves up to the mercy of others. Unfortunatly for most of us, or at least my peers and the people I come into contact with, the times that we have been vulnerable, we don't get the response we had hoped for. If we're reaching out for help, we get pushed away, or told we're not worth it, or that we don't need help. If we're letting someone know how we feel about a person (especially in a romantic situation), we run the risk of not having those feelings recipricated (in not so pretty terms, we get denied, shot down, etc). In short, when we open ourselves up to another we run the risk of being hurt. If it doesn't go well the first few times, we start to build up walls and become less inclined to "say what we need to say."

Over the past few weeks I've realized that I haven't really been saying what I need to say. I've had a pretty tough few months. Like most if not all recent college graduates, I'm still trying to figure out what on Earth I want to do with my life. This past year has lead me through many "growing expereinces," and in the past month I have made the choice to change my job, my church, and temporarily my location. Call it my quarterlife crisis if you want, but I have had to do some serious life inventory and spring cleaning. I'm absolutely petrified, and like a good Christian, I'm struggling through by being completely inconsistant in my prayer life, grumpy about going to church, and basically wallowing in my fear. Ok, so maybe I'm being a little mellow dramatic about it, but honestly I'm freaking out about all the change I've just thrown upon myself. However, through all these changes I'm finding my voice again. I'm learning how to speak up for myself, and the people around me. I'm facing conflict, and to be honest I might be stirring up a few people's lives by being honest about the hardships I've faced, but I'm saying what I need to say. I'm doing what I think I need to do, and I'm trying to be respectful but honest in the process. So, thank you John Mayer, for yet again putting another song in my soundtrack of life.