I have a dear friend who graduated from seminary and was heavily invested in a local church, serving as the Minister-to-Everything. She really is one of the most profound preachers and thinkers I’ve come across in my young life. Everyone knows that she belongs in a church, but something happened.
She burned out.
She got frustrated with the church politics, with some of the trivial arguments and with some of the periphery aspects of ministry that you don’t really expect going in. And so on a bench in Macon, Georgia with the late summer heat bearing on us even through the nightfall, we decided it was ok to be frustrated; that it was ok for her to walk away and leave the burden of fixing the church, at least for a bit.
My friend began a two year hiatus from the ministry to become a server at a classy burger restaurant in Tennessee. It was frustrating to all her friends. Good people like her belong in the church, people need such a beautiful glimpse into the love of God that resonates within her. But the matter was settled to her. And she was ok with serving burgers to the masses, because it meant she could collect herself, to be closer to family and friends, and to do what each one of us is so scared to do: wait.
I tell you her story because it is my story, at least somewhat. I didn’t make my decision on purpose, rather it was about the only decision I had left. But I was caught up in the unending cycle, the “grind” that we speak about in passing conversation, the moving from one step to the next in an attempt to piece together a semblance of what I thought to be the perfect life. While the circumstances were different, my problem was the same. I was trying to force my life in a direction that it wouldn’t go.
Around the time I was coming to grips with this realization, I was venting these frustrations to my friend in New York and at that moment she may have given me some of the best advice I’ve ever received.
Here’s the thing: I think usually whatever you are supposed to do will find you. You need to try some different things, make some changes and really try and learn about yourself. Learn about what you like to do and what you are good at…then you can worry about what’s next. Volunteer, get a job, do something out of your normal and let what’s next come to you. When you just focus so much on it, it won’t come.
It was so simple and yet it hit me square in the chest. I had set out about a year ago to do some great things, to go to far off places and to get on with my life but what I didn’t do was get prepared for all that. I didn’t know myself, I didn’t know who was important to me and because I didn’t know that, I had no bearing whatsoever for my next step.
When you have nothing that anchors you, you have nothing to launch from down your next path.
At least, that’s what I spent the year learning. The past 10-12 months of my life have been about writing a new story, one about committing to the right things, about acting with integrity and about being prepared, rather than being anxious, to get on to that next stage in life. But first I learned how to engage the writing process in my life story. I had to make a broad outline, and begin to fill it in with the bits that would form the rough draft.
And so I ended up, just like my friend, being a server, albeit at a high-end coffee joint rather than a burger joint. I tried some new things. I shored up all that was good from the old story that I could and I took new elements to create the plot for the next story. I sat back and let the creative presence of the divine take hold while I was in preparation for what would come. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t glamorous to be a recent college grad working at a chain coffee joint serving the extremely wired and tired masses, but there is also a lot to be learned from waiting.
Above all, I will hold onto the words of Abraham Joshua Herschel when he was interviewed right before he died in 1972:
Above all, remember that the meaning of life is to live as if it were a work of art. You’re not a machine. When you’re young, start to work on this great work of art called your own existence.
Or these words from a novel by Susan Howatch:
But no matter how much mess and distortion make you want to despair, you can’t abandon the work because you’re chained to the bloody thing. It’s absolutely woven into your soul and you know you can never rest until you’ve brought truth out of all the distortion and beauty out of all the mess – but it’s agony, agony, agony – while simultaneously being the most wonderful and rewarding experience in the world – and that’s the creative process which so few people understand. It involves an indestructible sort of fidelity, an insane sort of hope and indescribable sort of…well love, isn’t it? There’s no other word for it…And don’t throw Mozart at me…I know he claimed his creative process was no more than a form of automatic writing, but the truth was he sweated and slaved and died young giving birth to all that music. He poured himself out and suffered. That’s the way it is. That’s creation…You can’t create without pain. It’s all part of the process. It’s in the nature of things. So in the end every major disaster, every tiny error, every wrong turning, every fragment of discarded clay, all the blood sweat and tears – everything has meaning. I give it meaning. I reuse, reshape, recast all that goes wrong so that in the end nothing is wasted and nothing is without significance and nothing ceases to be precious to me.
I believe there’s something extremely beautiful about two future ministers spending a year or two serving people by feeding the hungry.
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