There was a time in my own life when questioning the existence of God seemed strange. Now, a questioner of some things thought important and many which are probably not, this statement seems strange, indeed. But there was a time when diving into the existence of God was not a thought I often attempted, and it was probably good that no one presented me the chance to discover whether there actually was a God or whether we were all environmentally manufactured flesh, placed upon earth by something totally ungodly and uncaring. Being young, it’s hard to really question anything. You may question certain random episodes of life, but we don’t do so to debate, rather; we do so to discover necessary truths. Not only are we unafraid, we are totally trusting. The childhood existence is defined by absorption; you’re a sponge dropped into the ocean, attempting to soak up every drop till you reach the sandy floor.  Your entire existence wrapped up in linear alphabet, snack time and getting lost in the grocery store. The youthful brain only has time to absorb and feel the world around it. And by brain I mean heart. And by heart I mean that portion of me which was unafraid and willing to love at all costs. This part of the brain, the heart, the soul, slowly dissipated and dimmed with age, but, never the less, it existed; dormant though it may have been for some time.

As a child you don’t want to believe there’s a God. But you don’t want to believe there isn’t a God, either. We just took in what the world around us was saying. Opinions and beliefs come with experience. Youth notice things such as flowers and how the color of the sky morphs and comes alive just as the sun goes to sleep under the horizon. They notice patterns in the eyes of their friends; the colors on the skins of people; and the texture of the people in their skin. They cheer on spiders as they summit thin blades of grass and spend time in thick weeds hunting down snakes and lightning bugs. When they color, draw or paint, they create masterpieces of rhythm and ordered chaos not confined to a page or outline. Sweat is a natural by-product of fun; dirt its counterpart. It seems as though children see God in the world around them—in people, texture and beauty—and it was good that I had heard of God as a youth because then I could slightly begin to understand what I was looking at. The beauty around me had a foundation, something from which it sprang. The beauty of the woods and the smell of the air after a mid-summer rain had value and purpose. It wasn’t useless or vague; beauty had roots which grew forth vision to allow beholders amazement and enlightenment. Beauty was my childhood path to God, and I was happy God had reason for existing through it.

As an ever aging man, genuine beauty lost its grip upon my heart. Either that or my heart lost its grip upon genuine beauty. Regardless, I grew accustomed to mountains and butterflies and lilies. I saw them on TV more often than in reality. Inundated with beauty, so overwhelmed by its presence, I was no longer capable of absorbing that which I will never understand. And beauty tends to exist between the spaces of that which we cannot comprehend. I deceived myself into thinking that I had figured out beauty. I knew how to reproduce it and make it better; manufacture it and sell it to the masses. I live in a Photoshopped world rampant with Hollywood and pornography; airbrushed magazine stars, cable TV, and the constantly accessible Internet. Beauty became what beauty was never meant to be. Beauty, in our world of waste, was transformed into something which it is not, constructed and rearranged to entangle and entice our fleeting brains. I mean hearts. I mean the parts of us which long for something true.

The difficulty in seeing God through beauty, as in childhood, is that what we consider beautiful is full of man made pixels, lines and shades of gray, and not God. We see colors from high resolution screens instead of rainbows. We witness green in dollar bills not blades of grass. We see blue in the eyes of refurbished actresses instead of the skies upon sunrise. Through it all we lost our view of God; the beauty set before us to help us experience and know of his potential existence; complex and difficult to understand in much the same way as the beauty of the universe itself.

The beauty of God is that he must be impossible to fully comprehend, grasp or settle upon. The moon became less beautiful once we climbed aboard and punched a flag through her dusty crust; its mere existence now thought of through the lens of scientific exploration and not bewildered wonderment. God wouldn’t be nearly as beautiful if we could climb atop, punch our mark into him and claim him conquered in the name of our own brains. Much like true beauty, God cannot be explained in a textbook or documentary. God, like beauty, must be experienced. We can view all existing pictures of the Grand Canyon, but until we have seen it with our own eyes, hiked through it with our own two lungs, and gazed into it with our own hearts, we cannot fully experience its beauty or begin to grasp its bewildering expanse. God must be experienced in some way. We can read books about God, listen to professors, pastors, and gurus try to explain him, but if we never personally experience him, how can we ever begin the process of standing in awe of his innate beauty and love?

Our lives—I mean our brains. I mean our hearts— I mean that part of us that used to wonder in awe at the movement of a hand, the curvature of lips, the ability to run and jump higher and higher, is dying to experience beauty. And somewhere inside of us, just maybe it’s dying to experience God, as well.

Forgive me.

Forgive me for my feeble attempts to appear strong.  For an artistic legacy of painted words and hand sculpted sentences.  For a self-concocted life spent ignoring the easily ignorable.  For my lack of attention in the midst of constant hurry and waste.  For a life spent in willing comfort, separated from those afflicted by misery; cut off from inner city, high rise slums; and detached from broken, underground societies.  Forgive me for made-up rules used to shackle and control–not release and set free.  For self-guided, service oriented ambition.  For good deeds done in vain.  For easily packing my bags, fueling my car, and driving away from the pain.  Forgive me for my legalism, for task oriented obedience.  For heartless, lukewarm deed-doing in the midst of an eagerly awaiting crowd.  For arrogant strength, attempted safety, self-prescribed confidence, and the pursuit of an over-glorified, perverted sense of happiness I called normality.  Forgive me for misdeeds and futile attempts to cover them with wine, war, words and money.  Forgive me for my numb smile and hardened heart.  For self-preserving security.  For self-righteous Christianity.  For loving routinely and relating coincidentally.

Rescue me.

Rescue me from this self-imposed, self-constructed prison.  Tear down my walls, scale my tower, defeat my ego, destroy my pride, and retrieve my burdened, enslaved heart.

Lead me.

Lead me away from a life of ease.  Lead me down the narrow way, the path of most resistance, the path of highest cost.  Lead me over the crags, the cracks, the juts, the sharps, the fissures, the boulders, and the slants.  Lead me through the darkest valleys, under the coldest bridges, and into the most sinister of hallways.  Lead me through the cold.  Lead me through the night.  Lead me through the depths of mourning.  Lead me through the tension.

Carry me.

Carry me when the weight of this life is too heavy to take another step.  Carry me when tears blur my vision.  When I can’t see the path in front of me.  When I can’t let go of this life you’ve given me.  When I’m paralyzed on the edge, and the trail is falling out from beneath me.  When the plaster cracks, and the mask falls away.  When the noise becomes deafening, and my ears bleed from the anxiety of the trial.  When I am unable to shift while the ground quakes under foot.  When my buildings collapse and my house is in ruin.  When I cannot breathe.  When I cannot stand.  When I cannot lift my head.  When I cannot bear my yoke.  When my burden is overwhelming.  When my heart bursts, and the remnants scatter about the city.  When all else is lost, and the path is but a thin, red line in the desert–carry me.

Overwhelm me.

Overwhelm me with your Spirit, with your love, with your grace.  Overwhelm me with your presence.  May the mystery of who you are disrupt this habit of a day I call my life.  Surprise me with your joy.  Quicken me to your voice.  Hasten me to your cry.  Build in me a new nature.  Overwhelm me with your gentleness, your compassion, your burden, your yoke.  Overwhelm this broken, undeserving monstrosity, and capture me in your caring arms again.

Disrupt me.

Disturb me.  Disrupt this life, for it would be of great travesty to live in such a way that no part of it could be obviously attributed to anything other than what I can accomplish on my own.

I am unsettled.

A certain restlessness stirs in me as I sit drinking hot tea within the confines of my apartment.  It’s 3am.  I can’t sleep.  I’m drowsy but wide awake.  I’m ready but unable to move.  I’m knowing but not quite enough.  I’m energized with nothing to accomplish.  It’s quiet but I’m having a hard time listening.  I simply sit.  And wait.  My head and heart compete for attention like blood thirsty rivals who chose long ago to live in the same house.  I can feel them quietly stealing from one another like enemy ants rapidly scurrying back and forth between where my brain and heart reside, carrying away stolen bits and pieces of each others homes in order to grow their personal mounds of accumulation.  The space between, the gap, the trenches now worn and filled with black ants and red, taking from each other in order to build their kingdoms within the borders of my restless flesh and bones.  The red take from the black and the black from the red.  They meet somewhere in the middle with crooked, evil smiles and rushed antenna nods in attempt to disguise the identity of their stolen property, quickly continuing on their way.  I can feel each of their hinged legs lightly touching down as they scamper back and forth along my spine trying desperately to store up enough of what the other has before the long, cold winter comes and there’s no more time to steal, no more time to store up, no more time to scurry about.  The trading of assets between my heart and my head leaves me unsettled as valuable pieces of who I once claimed to be are exchanged between colonies, each constantly hoping for a permanent place of rest and purpose.

Taken aback.

People tend to look at you strangely when you tell them these things.  When they ask you how you are, and you respond, “Honestly, unsettled.”  They tend to hasten their eyes, crumple their noses, and furrow their brows in deep, agonizing inquisition as to the nature and extent of your current, verbalized status update.  They take a step back, look a little closer, and internally begin to wrestle with your response as if something has genuinely upset them, thrown them off kilter, and caused them to question their own personalized form of sanity.  Unsettled.  Uneasy.  Uncomfortable with the way things are.  Unbalanced according to which ants worked harder the evening before.  Uneasiness breeds uneasiness.  It spreads from person to person until the entire room is declaring, “Party over!”  Uneasiness is rude like spending cocktail hour drinking a heavy pint of black brew instead of the routine, well-dressed, pink martini.  Uneasiness spreads until the tuxes and ballroom gowns are equally upset, and together we’re blown from one corner of the room to the next like fallen leaves pushed about by an eternal, unseen breeze.  Inwardly fallen leaves temporarily accepting of this identity because outwardly we’re clothed in bright yellow, burnt orange, red, and deep purple facades of seemingly esteemed perfection.  Outwardly beautiful, yet inwardly already dead, already detached from our source of life–wasting away–tossed about from one corner to the next not knowing where we’ll land and what our purpose will be when and if we ever do.  Unsettled.  People give me funny looks when I tell them I’m unsettled.  Like I need roots.  Like I need to settle down and settle in.  Like I need therapy.  Like I need to sit down and talk to someone.  Someone.  Someone who deals with people who are unsettled.  People who don’t have it all figured out.

Figure it out.

So I pretend to have it all figured out.  Wake up, kiss wife goodbye, go to work, clock out, get paid, come home, play with kids, brush teeth, go to bed.  Check, check, check, and check.  I live a checklist life so people can’t see my cracks.  I apply male cosmetics otherwise known as differing shades of pride and walk about the earth wearing well polished armor and mask to conceal the scars.  It’s acceptable.  “Pride is acceptable,” I convince myself.  I whiten my teeth, clean my car, press my suit, style my hair, go to church on Sunday morning, watch football, and cut my weedless grass.  Look at me and my neatly trimmed, dark green yard with white picket fence providing just enough buffer between me and the rest of the world.   I’ve got it all figured out.  I’ve got it all figured out until my clean, unsuspecting world starts to tremble and shift as the incomplete foundation of my heart, stolen away over time by nimble ants and embedded arrogance, can no longer stand on its own.  My kingdom’s buildings collapse upon me, and before I have time to reorganize and cushion my fall I find myself buried beneath the rubble, surrounded by people I ignored, fenced myself in from, and passed each day now screaming out in agonizing pain, dying beneath me as the residual debris from my former kingdom buries them alive, unable to move, unable to shift their heads, unable to breathe, unable to lift the concrete slabs off of themselves, unable to make sense of the chaos trapping them in the darkness.  I can hear them shouting for Jesus as their lives are slowly, helplessly drown out by the shadows of night and lack of hope for morning.  Their souls escape through the cracks and crevices left between the bricks and metal compressing their physical bodies as their voices are silenced once more, and their flesh is pushed to the grave.

If Jesus came by.

I’m an unsettled recluse in this life.  I hide my uneasiness behind a molded smile, crisp, green pieces of government issued paper, and social charity work for the so called poor.  I used to think that once certain decisions were made life would start to even out.  The storm would become calm.  The waves would stop sweeping over the boat and the wind would simply stop blowing.  The ants would start getting along and the leaves would slowly fall to the ground in graceful, easy, comfort.  I thought peace meant an absence of storms, an absence of uneasiness.  I used to think if Jesus came by my booth I would leave my pitiful tax collecting and simply follow Him.  No more crying out, “Save me!  I’m going to drown!”  No more being unsettled.

I’ll airbrush my way to freedom.

I’m unsettled by the tumultuous battle occurring between my desperate heart longing for something more and my stable, smart brain that implores me to stay on the steady, wide path.  The battle between actually living faithfully and just living with the knowledge of faith permeates to the core of who I am and constantly presses me to the fringes of uneasiness.  Uneasiness.  Suppressing uneasiness is easy.  Choose to ignore the war, and no one ever really dies.  Airbrush over my red, raised, pus brimming flaws and fill in my deep, jagged cracks.  I have it all figured out.  I will airbrush my way onto magazine covers and freedom.  I will ignore the ants and pretend as though my kingdom never fell.  I will live in constant admiration of the outer beauty I’ve managed to create, refine, and constantly update throughout my life.  People will neither hate me nor love me.  They will simply be lost with me somewhere in the in-between.  In the safety of the surface.  In the comfort of the fumes being released from the airbrush.  I will breathe them in.  Maybe kill a few ants.  Maybe sustain my kingdom for another day.  I will destroy my uneasiness and declare to the rest of the world that this Christian has it all figured out, and if you don’t than you need some of what I’ve got.

Unsettled behind the mask.

The perfect facade.  The best disguise money can buy.  The best flaw-covering foundation organic chemists ever produced.  Mask your blemishes and conceal your mistakes.  Let’s put our best face forward, uneasy as it may be.  Uneasy.  I’m uneasy.  I’m unsettled.  It’s 4 am.  I can’t sleep tonight.  My mask is in need of attention.  I’m starting to bleed through the cracks.  Dark red blood turning violet blue, staining my tan colored clay.  I’ll do some repair work in the morning.  Or maybe not.  Maybe I’ll peel away the putty and simply let the reality of who I am be the reality of who I am.  Maybe I’ll stop hiding.  Stop pretending.  Stop pretending that I have it all figured out. 

I don’t believe me.  I don’t believe the man in the mirror with clay and glue dripping from his face.  I don’t recognize me behind the mask.  I can’t sleep tonight.  My mask is putty in my trembling hands.  They’re covered in it.  Sticky, wet, warm, gray putty oozing through my finger tips, splashing on the floor beneath me.  I’m unsettled.  And I’m okay.

1. Beginnings and Endings.  Do not look at life as a series of projects or events or blocks of time involving categorized jobs or tasks.  Rather, understand that life builds on itself.  There are no endings and beginnings, only learning from today and building upon it in order to improve your tomorrow. Example:  The end of a college career is really only a commencement (beginning) to the rest of a students life.  A student very rarely learns everything (or even close to everything) that he needs to know for a career (or life) in the classroom.  A student is mainly learning how to learn. Important so that throughout the rest of their life, they can continue to learn adeptly and thoroughly whatever it is they may need to know or learn.  A so called ending to one event is genuinely just another continuation to the next great adventure.  Hence, don’t get frustrated when something seemingly ends or begins.
2. Do you act boldly in your beliefs?  Essentially, your beliefs and commitments and ideas require of you a level of zero courage if they are never tested by others who see things a little differently or completely oppositely.  Is it important to surround yourself with great, positive people?  Of course.  You become like those you surround yourself with.  BUT!…It is basically easy to believe what you believe and know what you know as long as you surround yourself with people who only believe and know as you do.  Your  beliefs and visions require zero courage to believe them if they are never tested.  It is easy to believe in something when you are surrounded by people who believe the exact same way.  Lesson?  Take the time to talk to, communicate with, interact with and join with people who see the world from a different and unique way.  Make sure your ideas are tested.  Does this mean you have to change what you believe?  Certainly not!  But, how can you expect your ideas or beliefs to grow stronger if you don’t put them through some testing or ridicule or run them by the critics?  Exactly.

Here is the challenge: Many visionaries, no matter how self-motivated (or whatever), never get their start-up…well…started up!  Blame it on, if your must, a lack of focus.

The new visionary, leader and entrepreneur all know that they can impact their community, city, state, country and world in a drastically positive and unique way.  They know (and believe!) that they can do something great.  They have the initiative, the proper attitude, the enhanced heart, the high flying mind set, the proper hair cut (what?).  In short, they have what it takes to really make a difference through their actions, business and perspective.  Yet for some reason they just can’t put it into MOTION.  Ever been there?

We are all either (1) looking to premiere our first great idea (2) looking to get our next great idea rolled out or (3) looking to improve our current great idea already on the market.  So how do we accomplish one or all of these things?  How do we set into MOTION that potential entrepreneurial energy which is currently stagnantly waisting away, not making money, not changing lives, not making someone else’s life better, in our revved up minds?  You know you possess the power to change lives, now how do you harness it and put it to use behind a great idea or goal?  Here are some questions and points to ponder in your search (Think, for real!):

1.  If you could be the greatest in the world at one thing what would it be?
   
2. If you had complete freedom of time, how would you use it?  
3. If you had all the resources in the world, what would you build, design or work at?
4. Take your answers from 1-3 and solidify them…write them down!
5. Your answers from 1-3 should reveal something deeper about yourself (your passions for example).  So go ahead and work at what your passionate about, what you really desire to do.  Make real plans to take a step toward making these answers a reality.  
6. Don’t take your life for granted.  Do that which you truly believe is worth doing, don’t make excuses.

There are people around you…everywhere!  They stand beside you in the deli line.  They pump their gas right next to where you stand to pump yours.  They sit in the cubicle right next to yours.  Their facebook picture shows up in line with your other 837 favorite friends.  They run on the treadmill, dripping sweat just like you, less than 2 feet from where you stride.  They eat their meals, many times alone, at the table just adjacent to yours.  They stand shoulder to shoulder with you in the elevator.  They cling to their mothers legs as she,not distracted, continues to shop.  They smile and slightly wave, make eye contact, and quickly move on.  They sit in church every Sunday, filling the pews just like you.  They cling to their newspapers at the coffee shop just like you.  They type away on anything and everything just like you.

Do you ignore them? …or… Do you initiate a conversation with them?

Some people hate to be bothered.  Don’t bother with them.  But, there are so many people out there, in the world all around yours and mine, that long for interaction.  Give it to them.  Interact.  Conversate.  Make a positive connection, no matter how small, and you will change that persons day, maybe even their life.  Don’t forget about those around you.  Make a difference by simply letting others know that you notice them, show them that you care.  Start as many conversations today as you can.  Inspire and be inspired.  How will you ever be able to meet the needs (being a visionary) of those around you if you never talk to them, get to know them and eventually learn those needs.  This will change your life.