33 Candles, by T.Y.

On this day, 33 years ago my parents welcomed me into the world. It was the roughest labour and pregnancy for my mother, but finally their first son arrived. I was named after my father, not only carrying on his last name, but his whole name.

Fast forward to the present, I look back at my life and the only thing that comes to mind is, 30-something (bleh). When you are in your early 20s thinking about your invincibility, you are convinced that by the time you are 30, you will have accomplished ‘X’ and by 40 ‘Y’ and possibly ‘Z’, so once you hit 50, you are already in ‘AB’ and beyond.

Then you wake up each new year in your 30s, and well, you have to wake up from your 20-something proverbial dream.

(Just let the somber music soak in …)

Last night, my wife asked me how I was feeling about turning 33 … and well, unfortunately, I was honest. Brutally honest. The kinda honesty that cuts through cold butter without trying (I might have just made that up).

Cliff notes version: Life’s hard, and I am the victim and the culprit.

This is the reason I stopped celebrating my birthdays. I’m a recovering mal-adjusted narcissist. Why a day that will encourage me to look inward? I have every other day for that.

No. Not this day! NO!
Why not? Because people are dying. A lot.

Yes, we are in a global crisis. A Pandemic unlike anything we have ever seen before. It has basically shut down our society. No post-apocalyptic, alien invasion, or Marvel movie could have prepared us for this, as much as we would have wanted them to.

The reality is with so much going on around us, I can’t help, but to remember the words of Moses, the man of God in Psalm 90, to teach us to number our days. It’s sobering.

This day, I am compelled to think about the medical professionals who are risking their lives to save people. I think about those who are most vulnerable to the spread of the virus. I think about our politicians, regardless of how you feel about them, who have tough calls to make; I do not envy their positions. Finally, I think about other countries all around the world, how this is not just affecting America, but virtually the whole planet. Let’s remember all of them in our prayers.

If I could make a birthday wish, it would be that in a year, when I am blowing out 34 candles, Lord-willing (James 5), that I can look back and say by God’s grace, the world rallied together to help each other survive a crisis (not on infinite earths, just our earth). That we experienced chaos on every level of our society, but God healed us as we turned to Him. That we stopped looking inward so we can help others, in the midst of it all.

Such Times and where My Mind is, by Will

Needless to say there is a lot going on right now. We face a global pandemic, as a nation we are preparing for a presidential election, personally I'm getting ready for another round of court hearings, while doing a CPE unit, taking care of a pregnant wife, and trying to wrestle with my own feelings and emotions surrounding everything. I've thought about Frodo and Gandalf's exchange in Moria a lot:

Frodo- "I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened."
Gandalf- "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

For my generation (Millennials since I was born in 1986), we have grown up in a world of bad things happening. In 1995, when we were in elementary school, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols committed domestic terrorism, bombing the federal building in Oklahoma City. I remember sitting in the library at school seeing pictures of the aftermath as an 8 year old.

In 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold carried out the mass school shooting at Colombine High School in Colorado. I remember sitting in the middle school cafeteria, talking about it with my friends.

When we were in high school, Osama bin Laden orchestrated the largest attack on American soil in decades, sending planes crashing into the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field. I remember watching smoke pour from the buildings in Mrs. Andrews' class room.

During college, Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32 people on the campus of Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007. I was in Dr. Williams class, as we were getting ready to listen to an Army Chaplain talk about military chaplaincy when one of my classmates read the news.

In the years right after college, Adam Lanza killed 26 people, the majority of the children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. I wrote a blog offering a prayer for 27 families, trying to wrap my mind about what they were going through.

Now, we are dealing with a virus that has infected nearly a quarter of a million people, shut down countries, and impacted the life of nearly every person on earth.

Those are the big tragedies that my generation has grown up with. Every major stage of life has brought with it a moment of great tragedy and death. This is the world, these are the times, we have been given.

My mind takes all this in, and I weigh it with the struggles in my own life. I'm an 1 on the Enneagram, and the opening line for the One song by artist Sleeping At Last is, "Hold on for a minute, 'cause I believe that we can fix this over time". My mind takes every situation, every bad thing, and goes to what I need to do to fix it.

I need to become a lawyer and work to bring justice back to the legal system, especially for dads.

I need to get into politics, work to establish term limits for congress, and get rid of greedy and self-focused politicians who don't understand the purpose of their office.

I need to become a doctor, figure out the truth of the vaccine debate, and work to help people be healthier.

I need to take on another church, helping them see how far we have come from what God intended, and bring reformation.

I need to build a blog or podcast that reaches the world and helps people be transformed.

I need to fully pour myself into my wife and daughters, being who they need me to be, who I alone can be in their lives.

I need to be more prepared when bad things like this pandemic happen so my family is taken care of.

I need to find time hike, bike, garden, and shoot so I don't go crazy and become useless to everyone.

And then I need to make breakfast.

I shared this with my wife and her words were, "It sounds like you're trying to be God." I shared it with my CPE instructor, and he said, "How does it feel to say all of that?"

I feel very helpless a lot of the time. I feel like there is so much that doesn't work the way it was supposed to work, and that it's up to me to fix it. And that's just an overwhelming feeling, so I let myself waste hours distracted on my phone, and then I get frustrated with myself for wasting time and not working towards World changing reformation. Welcome to my world as a 1.

I know I should say something here about trusting God, about realizing that I'm not God and that I don't have to be, that I've come to the point of surrender and fully trusting Him, letting Him be God, but honestly, it's hard to get there. I've felt like God has abandoned me, or at the very least is just ignoring me, and has been for years. I want to trust God, I want to surrender and let Him carry the weight of the world. I want to give myself grace, realizing I'm good enough and I don't need to earn God's favor or prove my adequacy to anyone, but I don't know that I can. Instead, I find myself saying exactly what Frodo said, "I wish that none of this had happened."

Quitting isn't an option, and today has started out more productive than Thursday's typically do. So I need to keep moving, keep trusting, and maybe I'll begin to give myself grace. Maybe I'll learn that there is nothing to do that will earn God's favor, nothing that will make me more adequate to my wife, daughters, or brothers. Maybe I'll finally realize that I'm enough, and that all I have to do is decide what to do with the time that has been given to me.

Fight the Lion, 1 Peter 5.1-11

TO GOD ALONE BE THE GLORY!