out of the lifeboat

so today--despite the fact that i have a mysterious insect bite the size of a saucer on the back of my leg, and ignoring the awkward near-encounter with my tenth grade chem teacher at the gym-- today has been rather nice for a thursday. in fact, the latter part of my whole week has had a rather sunny disposition. i thank Donald Miller.

Searching for God Knows What has this great orientating concept (if i can define such a thing when i still have yet to finish it) called the lifeboat theory. in a nutshell, Miller states that human beings were created to get their worth from a source outside themselves. before the Fall, this came solely from God. but since only two people lived before the Fall, the rest of us, broken as we are, have filled this need for outside approval and respect and love with the opinions of our fellow human beings. thing is, we all feel threatened by one another, as if we're all in a competition to see who can gain the most approval from others, and those who lose that competition are the social outcasts. if humanity was contained within one lifeboat, and there wasn't enough room for everyone to stay aboard, those who have the least peer-apportioned approval would be shark bait. and so we keep clawing for approval, for someone else to say that we're doing okay & we're cool enough (rich enough, pretty enough, smart enough, etc) to stay in the lifeboat. this becomes our identity, this becomes the basis for all we do.

BUT, the freaking sweet thing is that it doesn't have to be this way. which is what i realized this week. as much as so many of you have built me up, nothing anyone says, positive or negative, makes a difference. because God still defines my worth, and if i can stop listening to the static around me, i have been given the freedom, through Christ, to revel in that God-saturated identity.

so a bit of that truth finally sunk in this week. it's amazing how thick our skulls can be. especially when we're vulnerable. when we're hurting and in the greatest need of a love we can't understand. somehow, it's then that we forget that Jesus has rescued us & again we start pawing around the boat, trying to reassure ourselves that there are others as bad off as we are, maybe some who are worse, all the while trying to avoid eye contact with our 'betters', lest they consider heaving us out without so much as a "man overboard."

and of course by 'we' in that last paragraph--i mean me. but i reckon i might not be the only one...

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today i spent my last morning at preschool sans children--i'm ready for them to fill our classroom with their dear little two-year-old selves! (and how many diaper changes will it take for me to recant that statement...?) actually, yesterday we had our little open house. only 5 of our kiddies came, but they were awesome kids! one girl in particular, she was enamored with the little basket of instruments. she grabbed two maracas (which she did in fact know how to pronounce!) and proceeded to shake & dance her little heart out. love it.

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i've been thinking alot lately about how God wired us for relationship. first and foremost for relationship with Him, but He also created us for relationship with one another (see Gen. 1:18). and we talked about that incessantly in InterVarsity, and I agreed that loneliness was a plague on our campus and did my best to be welcoming to new faces on Thursday nights and tried to be a good small group leader who followed up with people and genuinely experienced the power of intentional relationship within discipleship groups. and i totally got it that experiencing God is not just about one-on-one time with Jesus, but it's about community.

now i'm in a place for the first time in at least four years that i'm starved for community. i crave relationship. and i'm hoping that wall posts and emails and messages and phone calls will sustain me until i can at least visit CH or until i begin building new relationships here. or until i begin trusting the community infrastructure i have in place within my family, within my church here--even though it looks different than IV, than Carolina.

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little brother is home from college for the weekend & already has tales of ramen noodle mishaps & gripes of too much reading. ahh youth. this week i was talking to katie, a dear friend in her junior year at Carolina, and could hear voices in the background while we were chatting. when i asked her where she was sitting, her reply of "the Pit" literally almost made me choke up. oooh to sit in the Pit and read the DTH and watch people walk by and have friend after friend stop by...what divine days those were. and apparently i am in a state of UNC-specific withdrawal which is little more signifcant that i realized. and we always thought that the hard stuff was over on graduation day...