On New Beginnings

Photo by Magic Madzik

So I moved to Nashville a few months ago.

There's something curious that happens when you make a move. You kind of get this opportunity to be something different. Nobody really knows who you were before you got there.

To a lot of my Nashville friends, I'm "that writer guy" or "the guy who's writing a book." But I'm not really known like that in Knoxville. Most people in Knoxville know me by the things I did as a Young Life leader or a youth leader at Cedar Springs, my home church. Some may even know me as "that guy who almost threw up on stage during his talk at youth group," or worse. Who even knows. I've done some weird stuff.

New beginnings are interesting. When your slate gets wiped clean, you have this rare opportunity to start again. You get to recalibrate, to rediscover yourself without the baggage that comes with your old identity, the way other people saw you that somehow defined you.

I'm on a kickball team with some people in Nashville. I wear a zip up hoodie and I put my hood up for every single game. The first couple times I did it, it was because it was raining. Now I do it because I think it's funny that some people know me as "that guy with the hood." As far as they know/care, I've never taken my hood off for anything, from pool parties to beach trips to weddings. And that's funny to me.

When you first meet somebody, that's when their story starts in your world. Until you start to think about where they might have come from, their past doesn't really matter to you.

And that's kind of how new beginnings with Jesus work.

When you meet Jesus, he offers you a clean slate. It's like you get to start your story again. It's one of those moments in life where you get to take the things you were known by, and the things you knew yourself by, and throw them out the window. You get to readjust the lens you look at yourself through, which causes you to live differently and more authentically.

You get to really find out who you are, to go the way you would have been going had you not had all that extra baggage.

And the coolest part, you can do it as many times as you like.

The things I hate most about myself, and the things I'm most embarrassed of, I can bring to God and he will give me a clean slate. He will let me start anew, like I've moved cities and started a new life, without my old self hanging over me to tell me how the "real me" is supposed to act or live.

I can choose to live out of the identity my past has told me I am, the one who has been unfaithful or an inconsiderate person or a bad lover or a bad friend, but I don't have to anymore. I can live out of the freedom of a clean slate. I can live out of my original design, the identity I was made for.

Is today the day for a new start?

Psalm 103:12 - "He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west."

2 Corinthians 5:17 - "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come."

Embracing Being "Small"

Photo by Jörg Schubert

There's a part of me that really wants to be famous.

I think it's because I long to leave a meaningful mark on this world.

When you get into your twenties, you become well acquainted with the struggle for meaning. If you haven't made it here yet -- get excited. It's something to look forward to. Late nights of wondering what the heck you're doing with your life, wondering if you may have missed an opportunity along the way, wondering what might have happened if you had majored in that OTHER thing in college.

My Resistance To "Small"

I've been pondering such ideas in the past year. So if I have described you, you're not alone. There seems to be something calling out to me when I get alone with my thoughts, that tells me my life needs to mean something... that it needs to amount to something.

That voice often ends up garbled. That is to say, I translate that restless feeling into sentences. Accusatory sentences with pointed fingers, saying, "Look at what you've done. Or should I say, look at what you haven't done. This other person is four years younger than you and already famous. They're changing things, and making a difference in the world. You, you're just... well... you."

I really want to mean something. I want to influence and impact a lot of people. I want to be a guy on TV, fighting for what I believe in, with my own foundation and my own books and my own mind-blowing ideas.

But you know, it may not go down like that. I may never end up saving the world. And if I don't, is that okay?

God's Heart For "Small"

God showed me something a few years ago. I was taking a spiritual formation class my dad teaches each year, and he decided to take us on a silent retreat to a lodge. We had to drive an old church bus up an 80 degree angle to get to the cabin we stayed at. When we got there, my dad handed us some sheets of paper which contained instructions for the retreat. There were some chants on there, those things where the leader says something and then everyone else says something back.

One of the sentences on the sheet of paper caught my eye immediately, and I couldn't stop looking at it. It said, For those who suffer and those who go back to be with them.

Going back to be with those who suffer. It put a picture in my mind of myself chasing a spotlight that was moving as fast as I could run. But the people Jesus said to take care of were hurting in the dimly lit corner. In order to go back for them, I had to give up my chase for the spotlight.

It did something to me and my fame desiring self. I ran it back through my mind over and over.  It felt like something was yelling from a place deep within me that I hadn't been paying much attention to lately. I had listened to that voice before, though, and I knew who it was. God had something he wanted to say.

Over the next 12 hours of silence, God showed me that there's a special part of his heart reserved for the "small." He enjoys the fanfare just fine, but something about him also enjoys the quiet, the faithful, and the hidden. I mean, look at the way he snuck into the world. He was born in a stable, for crying out loud. To a pair of teenagers. And then he became an unassuming carpenter. Not a royal ruler like the Jews were expecting, a carpenter. Isn't that crazy?

It's like he was trying to show people that things don't have to look meaningful to be meaningful.

Small Love Is Meaningful

It seems as though you've got the big voice Christians who are influencing lots of people, and you've got the everyday Christians who are loving the people in their lives one at a time. One isn't actually more important than the other. Nobody's going to see the work of the everyday Christian. But God does. And he really likes it.

I'm daily tempted to believe this lie: You're not doing enough, you're not accomplishing what God wants of you, unless you are getting famous. You're not working hard enough, well enough, smart enough.

That will kill you. That will take all your joy. That is a sneaky way to make you measure your worth by your performance. And that is not the Gospel.

Some of the most important things that happen for the sake of the Kingdom in individual lives come from the unknown deeds of an unknown warrior, an agent of love, working unnoticed in the shadows. This imagery is absolutely brimming with life to me. There's something sacred and holy about it.

I'm not famous. You're probably not famous (I'm playing the odds game here). The work we do for the Kingdom probably isn't going to be televised or shouted from the rooftops by all our friends. It's going to be small. We are going to be working from the place of the unknown. But let me just tell you, the place of the unknown is one of God's most treasured places. That's where he meets with the ones who go back to be with those who suffer. And he loves it.

Bringing it home with Gandalf the Grey

The small things are often the things that paradoxically bring the most potent change into the world. Gandalf said it best, like he usually does, when he said this in The Hobbit:

“Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay… small acts of kindness and love.”

Strong.

Maybe, when I'm longing to have a big impact on the world, its actually my misdirected desire to see the brokenness of the world fixed. And maybe if God's desires for the world can come to fruition by me being "small," then maybe it's time to get "small." This story is ultimately about him, not me.

I think I'm okay with that. Because when no one else is celebrating the small things, that's when God is the sole audience. And that's where I'll get the applause I really long for.

Why Failure Makes Us Better

Photo by Chris Potter

Failure.

One of the most hated words in the english language, right up there with the other "F" word and just above the words "seepage" and "moist."

Failure is never fun. It never feels good and often hurts quite bad. The reason why it hurts so much is simple: It suggests you weren't good enough.

But in my time in Nashville, I'm learning something new about failure. It makes me better.

To Try is to Risk

Here's the deal. It's scary to put yourself out there. It's really just scary to try at anything.
It's hard for me to push the publish button on every single blog post. Every musician friend I know has told me it's really hard to lay your best effort out there for everyone to criticize. It's hard to talk to some random scary looking guy next to you on the train about Jesus without fumbling over your words. We are deathly afraid of screwing up. And it paralyzes us.

To put forth effort is to risk failure. There's no getting around it.

I've made writing mistakes before. I've made mistakes as a youth leader before. I've accidentally told people the wrong stuff in bible study before. It's really hard to let those things go -- they haunt you, if you let them.

But here's the thing -- I don't think our failures ruin our lives, or God's plan, as much as we think they do. In fact, they seem to strengthen us in the end.

A New Way to See Failure

Every time I've screwed up in a friendship, I've learned how to be a better friend afterward.

Every time I've failed in my ministry, I've become a better leader afterward.

Every time I've messed up playing guitar, I've become a better guitar player afterward.

As humans, one of our main methods of learning is trial and error. But if we don't give ourselves grace when we make errors, how are we going to learn?

I struggled a lot with self condemnation earlier this year, until I felt like God was saying to me, "I haven't condemned you, why are you condemning yourself?" Those words stuck with me. Does a dad get disappointed with his son when he falls while learning to walk? Of course not. God gives us the security we need to venture out and try things, without carrying that enormous weight on our shoulders.

"Intelligent Fast Failure"

Jack Matson, a Penn State creativity professor, created this idea called "Intelligent Fast Failure" that I think is fascinating. It's the idea that the more times you can quickly fail at something while minimizing your losses, the better you will get at your skill.

So, in other words, the more times I mess up in my writing in a month and correct it, the better I will be at writing after that month is over.

So failure can make us better?

Thomas J. Watson seems to think so. He once said, "The fastest way to succeed is to double your rate of failure."

Additionally, I read an awesome article by James Clear called "Treat Failure Like A Scientist," which talks about the same thing. You can check that out here if you want.

The Main Idea

When we fail, the results aren't going to be all bad. It doesn't need to be a deep strike on our identities. It means we're continuing to change and improve, which is what we're designed to do.

God's really big. He can make up for our big failures. In fact, in Romans it says "his strength is made perfect in our weakness." What a refreshing thought! God's strength fires on all cylinders in situations where we are weak.

So let's allow ourselves to receive the grace we've been given when we mess up, and allow it to change us for the better. Failure is an opportunity to grow!

2 Corinthians 12:9-10 - But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

What If Our Greatest Strength Hides WITHIN Our Greatest Weakness?

Photo by Dave Fayram

So I don't always do things at a blistering fast speed.

In fact, that's a bit of an understatement.

So is that.

I like to think I do things thoroughly and thoughtfully, but my friends like to call that "being really slow."

In high school, a few of my friends chose to give me the nickname "Sammy the Sloth" because of how slow I did everything. I was the last person to finish every test, I was the last person to arrive AND leave, and I really just had a fairly slow walking speed to top it all off.

It didn't stick very well, seeing as how Tim is much easier to say. But it was the principle.

It was all well and good, but at some point I began to wonder why I couldn't do things faster. I mean, sometimes it would REALLY come in handy. That book I'm trying to write? Maybe it could be done by now. The 50 books I'm trying to read? Maybe I could be on number 25 instead of number 8. I just care about details more than other people do. I don't want to glaze over things.

That, and I've got a stellar case of ADD.

Attention Deficit is one of the things that slows me down. Because I know I'm susceptible to missing details, I make up for it by double checking the crap out of my work. But sometimes, my thoroughness comes at the cost of extra time.

My False Name

I've been living with a name being whispered in my ear every time I miss an important detail or crucial instruction. That name is Inattentive. It's a name I have carried with me ever since that time in third grade when I started being ADD medicine kid.

I had gotten used to it. After all, there were other names I was fighting that were way more hurtful throughout my life, such as Stupid, Insufficient, or "Not Fun To Be Around." Inattentive was on the back burner.

But God began to root out those false names throughout high school and college, and he wasn't going to leave Inattentive there to fester.

My True Name

One day, while I was at a worship gathering called Love War in Knoxville, I heard the most peculiar thing. Not with my ears, but with something else. And what I heard was this:

 Attentive One.

Well that's weird! There's no way that's referring to me! I've got ADD, for crying out loud! That's gotta be the last thing someone would use to describe me. But it wouldn't go away. And somewhere in myself, I knew it was true. I knew God had said it, so it had to be. But HOW, God? How is this true about me? The evidence didn't seem to add up...

Let me tell you about why I'm Attentive One.

I might have ADD, but because of it I've become extremely sensitive to the small details. And as I've begun to notice the small things people can tend to rush past, I've become passionate about not missing them. This is why I read slowly -- I am meticulous about the minute.

God's made me passionate about milking my time with him for all it's worth. He's made me the guy that stays for an extra hour longer because I don't like to miss any of the little stuff. And I believe because of that, God "shares his secrets with me," as my wise friend Kristin put it.

Here's something else Kristin taught me.

The person God says we are often looks opposite of the person we've come to believe we are.

Who would have thought I was Attentive when I am stuck with Attention Deficit? But we see this kind of thing in scripture too. I mean, look at Peter. He wavered in his faith so much that he denied he even knew his best friend Jesus three times, and then Jesus called him Rock. He told Peter, "You are the Rock on which I'm going to build my church." 

For a long time, one of my best friends was super frustrated by his tendency to be a people pleaser. One day he told me, "I hate this part of me. I just want to kill it." But in shutting that part of himself off, what else would he be shutting off? What if he would be shutting off one of his greatest assets? 

What if our greatest weaknesses are the natural dark side of our greatest strengths?

We people pleasers may run ourselves into the ground out of fear sometimes, but what if that fear wasn't there? What if Perfect Love were to come along and cast out that fear? Then we'd be left with a gift of loving people that the rest of our community would be left in awe of.  People pleasers who've been freed from fear are quite a sight to behold.

Where might a strength be hiding in the place you hate most about yourself?

Could it be that this strength might be deeply needed by everyone else?

How Job Searching Taught Me More About Myself

Image by Peter Kaminski

So the job market is a little less than ideal these days.

They told us before we graduated, but we weren't listening. We were COLLEGE STUDENTS. Of course we weren't listening. "Surely it can't be THAT bad," we thought.

It's THAT bad.

When I decided to move to Nashville, I didn't realize I was walking into a job deadzone. I am living in the Bermuda Triangle of jobs.

The more twenty somethings I meet in Nashville, the more people I realize have been affected by the lack of specialized jobs available. Some are getting scrappy at restaurants and coffee shops to pay the bills. Others are holding out for a career entry point. "I just want a place where I can learn and grow in my field. I wish someone would just give me a shot!"

I was talking to one of my best friends about jobs the other day. He, like many other people, has been trying to get in with a cool company who will mentor him into a fine businessman. "I want to be a part of a company where I can grow to be an integral part of it. I want to find a place of belonging in a company I believe in," he said.

There's something special about that desire. 

We as humans have this desire to bring something unique and necessary into a larger group, something that will make that group better and stronger. We want to be an integral part of something bigger. When we don't feel like we are, it makes us restless.

I moved to Nashville get the space necessary to write a book about deep self identity. Along the way, though, I've noticed myself becoming antsy. I found my time increasingly evaporating on job websites and applications, instead of using my time to write the book I feel called to write. Yeah, I've got a job that pays the bills, but I need a cool job. What's happening?

Fear. Fear of not measuring up, fear of not being important, fear of not having enough money, fear of not meaning anything to any larger body of people. Fear has robbed a significant amount of my time here in Nashville.

Here's what I've learned. Living out of fear robs us. It keeps us from living in the larger story, the one God is masterfully crafting around us and is calling us to have a significant role in, and it keeps us confined to our own smaller stories.

We let our small narratives rule our lives by fear.

Our hearts were made for the bigger story. We can see it in everything we want most deeply in this world. I can see it in the desire my friends and I have to be an integral part of a cool company, to have a job that not just anyone can do.

The funny thing is, the book I'm writing IS that avenue into the bigger story for me. It IS the place I'm called to lay down self preservation and fight for people's deep selves. But all too often, fear pulls me back into my smaller story of wanting money or recognition or importance (job wise), and I become miserable again. And I begin trying to control everything. And I stop living in the Gospel.

There's something in this world that's larger than jobs.

We know it. But do we actually know it?

Don't be robbed of your part in the larger story because of fear. God gave us the stories in the Bible, and among them the book of Esther, to show us that he is in control. And he is worthy of control. He does crazy things in order to not just provide for his people, but to elevate them to unimaginable places (like Esther becoming queen) when the larger story calls for it.

Be vigilant. Don't let the enemy use fear and self preservation to cause you to miss out on what you were made for. Because the human heart was made to take part in something bigger than a job squabble. It was made to take part in a sublime rescue story, an adventure of epic proportions.

Proverbs 20:5 - "The purpose in a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding will draw them out."