Make a Move

I am really good at being mad at other people. I am a master of placing blame and feeling frustration when other people disappoint me or let me down. I am really good at angry.

Where I am having a hard time is when the person that I am frustrated with is myself. When I am the one that let me down. That I am not good at. Not at all.

For the last several weeks I have had this feeling inside me. Frustration. Angst. Confusion. It has been building to the point where I can't pretend that I am happy. People don't do well with that version of me. The one that isn't silly and fun. I am not really sure what to do with her either.

I have been reading tons of stuff and praying a lot lately and the more I read and the more time I spend with God, the more I feel like I am failing.

If there was on characteristic I could change about my self, it would be the speed at which I fall. Fall in love with ideas, fall in love with ideals, fall in love with programs and concepts and models and systems. But mostly, fall in love with people.

It doesn't take me very long before I meet a kid and I love them like they were my own. I worry about them. I wonder about them. I pray and plan and dream for and about them.

I want the same thing for them that I want for my own boys. I want them to be healthy. I want them to be happy. More than that, I want them to fall in love with Jesus. Not just hear about him, not just believe about him. Believe in him, with everything that they are and with their entire lives. I want them to recklessly love the one that created them.

That's is where I feel frustrated. That is where I know that I have failed. I have stood in front of a room full of kids over and over and over again and I have told them that Jesus loves them. I have told them with songs and puppets and silly games that Jesus wants to be their best friend.

I have told them. I have been working with them long enough, that for many of the kids in our church, I have told them a hundred times how much Jesus longs to to be number on in their lives. They know it because they have heard me say it.

But many of them don't believe it. The don't believe that Jesus really changes things. They don't believe that Jesus can come into some one's life that was screwed up and change them. They don't believe me, because they haven't seen me live that way.

Research shows that by the time kids turn 18, they are aren't just slowly dropping out of the church. They are running. As fast as they can, they are deserting a culture that cared more about telling them how to live right than it did showing them. They don't leave the church because we didn't tell them. They leave because we failed to show them a life that would cause them to believe us.

That makes me sick to my stomach. That keeps me up at night. That makes my heart so sad that I simply can't pretend to be happy. That makes me wanna scream and fight and more importantly, it makes me wanna change.

It means that I believe the things that I tell them are true. It means I believe that God can show up in my own screwed up life, and make it better then OK, make it right. It means that I stop living everyday as a sentence and start living it as a story. It means I let go of some things that I have become far too good at holding on to.

It means that I have to move. To be honest, I am not even sure I know what that means. But I do know that not doing it is not an option. The stakes are too high not to make a move.