I've had a lot of time to think over the break. I have, for the past year, been thinking about writing a book about all of the things I feel like I have learned about who I truly am, and about the way I resemble God, and about the things that I was made to be and to do. The needs that I have had that I don't understand... The things that scream out from a deep place in me that I haven't explored yet... those are the things that I am incredibly interested in.
I am fairly certain that for each of us, some of these deep, unexplored places are the same. We all share certain desires: we all want love to some capacity, we all want adventure to some capacity, we all want to bring something special to a group larger than us. But I am also certain that we each have special places, unique to our own Original Designs, where our passions burn in a way that is different from those around us... Unique things within us that set us apart, that cause us to desire a road we don't see other people on. And that is scary. For some, that burning inside cries out to us for newness and excitement. For others, intimacy is the only thing that really matters... and finding it. Some of us are willing to give up everything to travel the world, while others never leave our hometowns as long as we had a steady job and a meaningful, intimate relationship. And neither is wrong... it's what is inside us. Maybe sometimes we misinterpret what we truly want... but the things we yearn for we should never feel sorry for.
Everyone has different preferences and things they find themselves wanting to do... But I am certain that whatever it is that we see on the outside runs much deeper than that. I believe that the hidden engine of each human being is made up of a unique set of heart motivations and deep needs that we don't understand and don't know how to fulfill.
I live in my own brain for most of the time. And those things are what keeps me thinking all day.
(So if you see me wandering down the hallway with a confused look on my face... just let it happen.)
I learned a ton about myself by finally getting the courage to look deep within what is really happening when I get out of, say, the movie Avatar, and feel like there is a stake in my heart because there was something in that movie that I couldn't have. I realized that there are things in me that don't just come alive, but begin screaming when I choose to connect myself with a story that has a specific recipe, a few certain special things that my soul is dying for... Which, those specific things don't make tons of other people feel the same way. In fact, I know plenty of people who thought that movie was kinda stupid. But that is what I'm talking about. That just means they have different passions. Nobody is just not passionate. Because God is super passionate and we were made in his image. My manifestation of that image just so happens to be all about some adventure... at least what I know about it right now. And the way that Avatar pressed my buttons is unmistakable. Really, a ton of movies and books do the same thing. Avatar is just the first one that came to my mind. It's not just because it was a good story. There were themes, elements from it that I just wanted to have... to be involved in. I didn't want to be blue (or did I...?). I just wanted what was there on an elemental level. There is something about a beautiful new world, a dangerous, exciting new way of life as opposed to the mundane normality of the weekly grind, all combined with some sort of mysterious romance, that just had something inside me doing backflips when I left. And these weren't the sappy love kind of backflips (unnecessary defense of my manhood? maybe). It didn't feel good. I knew there was some aspect (or aspects) of that dangerous love adventure that were unavailable to me. And every time throughout my life a story with the right recipe came along, all that would happen. And let me tell you, it sucks.
I lived my life like this for twenty years.
The next step for my heart (I don't always like to use "Christian vocabulary" because honestly it doesn't make sense to everyone... but I'm just going to call it my "heart"), after being exposed to these elements that caused the "heart screaming" to ensue, would be what I just now decided to call the "consolation" approach. I would just decide to try to get as close to that story as I could. I knew something was heartbreakingly out of reach in my own story, so I would gravitate to those other places where I felt the things that I wanted.
But was it? Is it truly out of reach? Is that the only option? I eventually began thinking about what I claimed that I believed. If God is everything that I want and need and more and all that stuff, then why do I find myself longing after other places and other stories? It just can't be that God made the world like that... the "consolation" can't be the way it was intended from the beginning.
I don't believe we have to live like that anymore. Not after what God is showing me about my Original Design.
Something about me is drawn to things like joining with a group of like minded people for an epic purpose. I am mesmerized by an epic struggle between a hero and his enemy, the fate of something huge hanging in the balance, where at the same time there is also an intimate romance growing. An adventure story intertwined with a love story. These are the things I began to observe when I looked deep into myself.
It turns out, God made me for this. Go figure.
And yeah, it's not going to look like an adventure all the time. God has spent the last 2 years of my life proving to me that this is actually my story. Because I think the enemy is good at convincing me that my real story is the opposite, that God's not really offering anything I actually want.
What do you want at your core? Could it be that God has actually made you for it?
What if there was hope that what you wanted at the deepest part of you could really be satisfied?
That's why I've been prodded by my own curiosity and my own Original Design to begin to write a book about Original Design. I am scared of saying that because I kind of don't ever finish anything. But after creating 15 pages of notes over the past year of my life, I felt the call to start it this weekend... amidst all the other voices I constantly hear that I'm too young to really know anything about the world, that I don't know enough yet, and that I'm full of crap and wasting my time.
It's going to be a really hard journey. An adventure, perhaps. But adventure is my middle name.
I will leave you with this excerpt from the beginning:
what is it in a brilliant movie, or a good story, that awakens that eerily familiar screaming in your heart? you know what I'm talking about. I’m talking about the hollow longing left after something deep in your heart connects with another story for some reason, whether it’s a fantasy story or someone else’s life, and is ripped away like an old band-aid that’s somehow retained too much of its stickiness when the story comes to an end. Why can’t that be my story? Why can’t this be real? maybe you haven't ever listened to the screaming. it just seems to cost too much. this is because to notice it fully you know you would have to come to grips with the pain of unfulfillment. but is it there? can you feel it? maybe you remember it as someone remembers a dream... something you werent fully aware of and chose to forget... but the screaming won't stop screaming. you can try to shut it up. you can try to cork the open bottle it is coming from. you can stitch the gushing wound back up. but it will catch you off guard again one day when you become vulnerable. it always does. and when it does, once again, you have the deepest hunger from the deepest pit of your heart screaming for something. are you brave enough to listen to that instead of running from it? are you bold enough to enter the most hungry place of your soul, without knowing for sure whether it can truly be satiated? what if you unleash a monster, untamable by anything in this world? but... what if you find something?
The deepest part of our hearts will only scream for what we are made for.
