In Crazy Flux

So, this is where I'm at for the moment: I'm finishing up at Grand Targhee Ski & Summer Resort as a server at the Targhee Steakhouse in the next couple of days. I'm flying home in two days, and leaving from PDX the next morning to fly to Florida and hopefully get on a cruise for a week(ish). I'll then have a week, yes ONE week at "home" before I begin to head up to Alaska again. A four to five day road trip with a friend and some frost eaves and then I'm on to the next adventure. Which should be just quite such a thing. I'm going back to work for the same company as last year, but I'm going to the manager. I'm experiencing, really, equal parts of excitement and freaking out about this new position, but that's another thing entirely.

I was telling a friend this morning the story of how I ended up at Targhee on the way up the hill to work this morning. I laughed when I realized kind of how crazy it all sounded because it was so last minute and spur of the moment. It was so God too.

I laughed, yes, but I'm also really grateful. I'm grateful not only for the experience that I've had being here in Driggs, ID, but also for how far I've come. And then, I'm also convicted à la fois about how far I have to go.

About 3 years ago, when my brother Jesse went into the Marines I was suddenly thrust into keen awareness of how much I found my security in my family. This became apparent through the absence of my brother and I took him leaving really hard. No really, I cried for six months about the whole thing. We were so close. I remember feeling kind of stupid that it had hit me so hard, but I really learned that different people just feel things differently. And I also learned that my source of security was horizontal not vertical.

During one tearful conversation with God , I remember how tenderly he told me and brought the point home that He wanted to be my source of security. My "all in all" to use the recently-become-slightly-cliché phrase. Though it may not seem like it relates, I remember at the time this verse often coming to mind:

For to me, to live is Christ, to die is gain. Philippians 1:21

That's where he wants me to be. My dad once wisely said that every human being has two basic needs: significance and security. This statement of Paul's answers to both of those. I have always significance in Him, but I needed to find my security completely in Him as well. The next couple of years was a long and painful journey to begin learning that, and today I was grateful for how far I'd come, just thiking about these past few months. I now travel so much, and work seasonally, and am able to enjoy it so much because my security is becoming found in my Father. But I've still got so far to go.

I was reading someone else's blog today that kind of touched on the same kind of thing. He inserted a really pertinent and convicting excerpt from a book called The Nature Of God: Upgrading Your Image of God and Who He wants to be for You, by Graham Cooke. I might have to get my hands on it:

“Whenever we move into a new spiritual dimension of our calling and our ministry, we must take the time to upgrade our relationship with God. Our calling comes at different levels at different times; it is a progressive journey of discovery. When God takes us into the next phase of our calling, our relationship with Him must also change.
Throughout our lives, we will enter into many different phases and experiences. It might be a marriage or the birth of a child, a significant work promotion, a new responsibility, a new ministry, or any other type of change. In seasons like that, we must take the time to upgrade our peace and rest in the Lord. If we enter a new situation without fully immersing ourselves in the stillness of God, we will live on our adrenaline and not out of our spirit. This power boost may seem sufficient at the moment, but for every adrenaline high, there is also an adrenaline low. We cannot sustain that needed adrenaline rush over the long term. Eventually, our energy will wither away and the new season will overwhelm us. We must learn to live in a place of rest in the spirit.
Every experience of God, even resting in Him, should enable us to see Him in a different light. Therefore, we need to constantly re-evaluate our relationship with Him and take a deeper look at our walk with Him. We must critically examine our current picture of God and determine whether it is strong enough for the next stage of our life and call. If it’s not, the stress that we will experience will put pressure on us to quit or scale down our involvement in the new seasons of our lives. That same battle fatigue causes us to shrink back from the challenges facing us. Exhausted, we will talk ourselves out of taking the risks necessary to advance the Kingdom of God. God has given us the ability to live under His wing – we must recognize that we exist within the safety of His love and grace, and not on our own.
I cannot emphasize this enough – every time we are led into a new phase of our journey, we must take time to upgrade our image of God. We can travel confidently into any new experience, no matter how challenging or difficult, in our relationship with Him. God wants to build up your confidence right now, taking it to a whole new dimension.
When we enter a new season it is important to ask ourselves relevant questions regarding its likely impact on all of our relationships and current responsibilities. Present levels of stress will need to be adjusted in the light of deeper peace and rest that will be required on the next leg of the journey.
Change is much better if it is gradual rather than a large overwhelming transformation requiring immediate extensive attention. The two questions required of us in a consistent basis are found in Acts 2, verses 12 and 37:
What does this mean?
What must we do?
How will these adjustments affect our relationship with God and one another? How will this new season deepen my love, joy and peace in the Holy Spirit?
We need to gain a fresh and more powerful image of the nature of God. We need to practice our peace and our patience so that we can break through, in harmony with others, into a new dimension of the Spirit.” (Pages 11-13; emphasis mine)

Wow. This is where I'm at. Or rather, what I need to be doing. This is what I did not do before heading to Alaska last summer. And most of all right now, this is what I'm a little bit of a loss as to how to start doing.

So, this is my prayer:

Father,
Show me how to update my view of you. I struggle at times to connect you with my everyday experiences and relationship and with compartmentalizing my spirituality apart from the rest of the areas of my life. I want infusion of your Spirit into every last facet of my life, and show me where to begin on this journey. You're becoming my security. I want to get to that place, God, where to live is You and to die is gain. I'm changing, my life is changing a lot these days. Let me relationship with you not lag, but be where it needs to be to grow. Let my growth in You not be stunted by my weakness in struggling to spend time with you and focus on You, and what you're doing. Let me not forget to tremble.
-T. Emerson